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HISTORY 



OP THE RAVAGES OF THE 



YELLOW FEVER 



IN NORFOLK, VIRGINIA, 



A.D. 1855. 



BY 



GEORGE D. ARMSTRONG, D.D. 



PASTOR OP THE P] 




;URCH IN NORFOLK, 



PHILADELPHIA: 
J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. 

1856. 






ii 



M*\ 



Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1856, by 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the 
Eastern District of Pennsylvania. 



STEREOTYPED BY L. JOHNSON & CO. 

PHILADELPHIA. 
PRINTED BY T. K. AND P. G. COLLINS. 



CONTENTS. 



PREFATORY LETTER. 

PAGE 

Reasons for writing this History — Plan to be pur- 
sued 7 

LETTER I. 
Announcement of the Existence of Yellow Fever in 
Norfolk — Effect of this Announcement — Way in 
which it seems to have been introduced — Reasons 
for and against its General Spread — Present Con- 
dition of the City — Course of Duty 13 

LETTER II. 
Spread of the Fever — Its mild Type — Visit to Ports- 
mouth — Deserted state of that place — Panic — 

Causes of this Panic — Quarantine Regulations — 

3 



4 CONTENTS. 

PAGI 

Quarantine Order of Welden — Death in the Street — 
Howard Association formed — Burning of Barry's 
Row — Day of Prayer appointed 31 

LETTER III. 

First Death among the Members of the Presbyterian 
Church — Arrival of Physicians and Nurses from 
abroad — Removal of the Hospital to Lambert's 
Point — Reported Flight of the Protestant Clergy — 
True Statement 49 

LETTER IV. 
Effect of Cold Storms in the Spread of the Fever — 
People bewildered — Burial of Rev. A. Dibbrell — 
Death of Mayor Woodis — Aid from abroad — Esta- 
blishment of the Howard Hospital 64 

LETTER V. 
A Pastor's Sabbath in a Plague-stricken City 75 

LETTER VI. 

The Crisis of the Epidemic — Frightful Mortality — 
Burying in Pits — A Burial in a Plague-stricken 
City — Appearance of the Cemeteries — Appearance 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

of the Harbour — Cases of Robbery — Character of 
Nurses from abroad 92 



LETTER VII. 
The Pestilence abating — Death of Miss Eliza Soutter 
— Scene at the Post-Office — Proposal to remove the 
People to Old Point 109 

LETTER VIII. 
Personal Experience of the Fever — Unfulfilled Pre- 
sentiment of Death — Proposed Departure from 
Norfolk 118 

LETTER IX. 
Family Afflictions 131 

LETTER X. 

Mortality among the Clergy and Physicians — Remark- 
able Recovery — Yellow Fever a Disease not to be 
trifled with — Letters from abroad — " A City of Con- 
valescents" 143 

5* 



6 CONTENTS. 

LETTER XL 

PAQB 

Disappearance of the Fever — The Orphans — The 
Plague-Fly — Description of it — Hypotheses respect- 
ing its Nature 156 

LETTER XII. 
Results of maturer Reflection — How was the Fever in- 
troduced into Norfolk ? — Why was it so fatal ? — Is 
Yellow Fever contagious ? — Practical Inferences .... 168 



Unfatorg %ttht. 



TO WILLIAM MAXWELL, ESQ, 

SECRETARY OF THE VIRGINIA HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 

When I had the pleasure of meeting with you in 
Richmond, a few weeks ago, you expressed the 
wish that some one should write a brief history of 
the pestilence from which our city has suffered 
during the past summer, remarking that this visita- 
tion of the pestilence had been of such unexampled 
violence, that its history would properly enter into 
the history of our State ; and that for this reason, as 
well as others, it seemed desirable that some more 
connected and generally acceptable account should 
be given of it than that furnished in the reports 
which appeared from time to time in the daily 
papers. This undertaking you were pleased to urge 
upon me, as one who had remained in the city 
during this "summer of the pestilence," and more 

7 



8 PREFATORY LETTER. 

especially as one who, in the discharge of the 
duties belonging to a minister of the gospel and the 
pastor of a Christian church, had been called to see 
and know more than most others of what was really 
occurring in our midst. 

My reply then was, that, although the same re- 
quest had been made from other quarters, I could 
not consent to undertake the work, partly because 
of the intrinsic difficulty of the task, but mainly 
because I felt that it must be to me an exceed- 
ingly painful one. There are scenes in nature 
which the painter, who has studied the capacities 
of his art, will never undertake to transfer to 
canvas. So are there incidents in the history of 
this pestilence, — incidents of which I was an eye- 
witness, — which no one, it seems to me, who has 
tried the capacities, or rather, I would say, the in- 
capacities, of human language, will ever undertake 
to put upon record. Human language is the crea- 
ture of every-day life, and therefore unfitted to 
record events which, occurring but once in an age, 
do not enter into the common experience of man. 
I felt, too, that to me such an undertaking must 
prove an exceedingly painful one. Not that I could 
ever wish to forget the many dear friends numbered 



PREFATORY LETTER. 9 

among "the dead of the pestilence;" nor that 1 
could willingly, even if such a thing were possible, 
obliterate the impression made upon my memory 
by the most painful scene of parting through which 
I have been called to pass. Saddening though these 
recollections be, yet does the scarred heart cling to 
them as choicest treasures; but it is one thing to 
retain and cherish these recollections in the privacy 
of one's own bosom, and a very different thing to ex- 
pose them to the public gaze; and this last is that 
from which I shrank. 

Since my return home, this undertaking has been 
urged upon me for a different reason. The thought 
has been suggested, that, should this terrible pesti- 
lence prove to be "a travelling epidemic," on its 
way northward, (and I know that the ablest phy- 
sicians from the south, who were with us, and who 
had watched its course for the several years last 
past, believed that such was its character,) a 
brief history of its ravages in Norfolk might be of 
great service in any city in which it might hereafter 
appear, in showing to the inhabitants of such city 
just what dangers they had to apprehend and in 
what ways they could labour most effectually for the 
relief of the suffering. Xever can I forget [he kind- 



10 PREFATORY LETTER. 

ness, the prompt, the generous aid, extended to us 
by our northern brethren, in our time of trial; — timely 
aid, but for which there had been few left to tell 
the sad story of our sufferings ; and God forbid that, 
for any merely personal considerations, I should 
refuse to acknowledge that kindness in any way and 
in any measure in which it may be possible for me 
to do it. My hope is — my prayer to God is — that 
Norfolk may prove to be the northern terminus of 
the course of this pestilence. And yet such may not 
be the plan of Him who directeth its steps ; and the 
bare possibility that it may burst upon some of our 
sister cities to the north, during the coming sum- 
mer, has changed my purpose, as expressed to you, 
and determined me to undertake the work, painful 
though it must prove to be. 

In order that I may accomplish the main purpose 
for which I write, and the only purpose which 
could have overcome my repugnance to the task, it 
will be necessary for me to confine myself pretty 
much to my own personal observations, — a record of 
that which I have heard, and seen, and felt, during 
the prevalence of the fever in our city, — adding such 
statistical and general statements only as are neces- 
sary to complete the record of these personal observa- 



PREFATORY LETTER. 11 

tions. For this reason, it has seemed to me best to 
give what I shall write the form of a series of 
letters, purporting to have been written from time 
to time, as the pestilence progressed in our midst. 
Many of the incidents of which I shall have occa- 
sion to speak have so burned in their record upon 
my memory, that no effort is required to bring them 
up again in all their original distinctness. Others 
I shall supply from memoranda made and letters 
written at the time. In these letters I shall en- 
deavour to recall my feelings and impressions, so 
as to write just as if the letters had been written at 
the dates they bear; the only liberty taken being 
to correct certain errors, as to dates and numbers, 
into which I would have fallen had I then written 
them. 

I have taken the liberty of addressing these 
letters to you, in part because you have for many 
years honourably filled the office of Secretary of the 
Virginia Historical Society, — and there seemed to, 
me a propriety in giving to a series of historical 
letters such a direction,— but principally because you 
are a native of Norfolk, and long filled the office of 
ruling elder in the church of which I am now the 
pastor, and are, therefore, personally acquainted 



12 PREFATORY LETTER. 

with many of those of whom I shall have occasion 
to speak ; for, as the pastor of a particular Christian 
church, my personal recollections must, in large 
measure, concern the members of that church and 
congregation; and I know that you do feel and have 
felt an interest in them such as could be felt by no 
stranger. 

It might seem, at first thought, that, pursuing 
such a plan as this, I would not give what could 
properly be called a History of the Pestilence in 
Norfolk. A full history would be but a multipli- 
cation of the scenes and incidents I shall have occa- 
sion to describe; and if the reader, as he passes 
along, will bear in mind the fact that mine is one 
of nine Christian congregations in the city of Nor- 
folk, he will need nothing more to render this a 
proper history of the ravages of the pestilence in 
Norfolk. 

With the wish that you may long live to watch 
over the interests of our Historical Society, 
I remain yours truly, 

Geo. D. Armstrong. 

Norfolk, Va., December 1, 1855. 



THE 



SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 



LETTER I. 

ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE EXISTENCE OF YELLOW FEVER IN 

NORFOLK — EFFECT OF THIS ANNOUNCEMENT WAT IN 

WHICH IT SEEMS TO HAVE BEEN INTRODUCED REA- 
SONS FOR AND AGAINST ITS GENERAL SPREAD — PRE- 
SENT CONDITION OF THE CITY — COURSE OF DUTY. 

Wednesday, Aug. 1, 1855. 

On the day before yesterday it became 
generally known here that the yellow fever 
existed in our city. As you have probably 
learned from the daily papers, this terrible 
disease has prevailed in Gosport for some 
time past; and within the last ten days, 
quite a number of cases have occurred in 
Portsmouth, just across the river from us. 
Now, I think there is no reasonable doubt 

2 13 



14 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

that it exists in our city also. I use this 
expression, "no reasonable doubt," because 
there are some who do doubt the existence 
of the yellow fever here ; calling the dis- 
ease which is causing great alarm among 
our citizens "the Upshur fever," after our 
good friend, Dr. Geo. L. Upshur, in whose 
practice most of the cases, thus far, have 
occurred. 

It is a very difficult matter for a phy- 
sician, situated as Dr. Upshur has been, to 
know just what he ought to do. It seems 
now that cases of fever have existed in 
our midst since the 16th of July, which 
Dr. Upshur, although for a time unwill- 
ing to admit it, now that the disease has 
had time to show its true nature, has be- 
come thoroughly convinced are cases of 
yellow fever. On Monday, he took the 
responsibility of making known what he 
believed to be the truth in the case. And 
now, while some are blaming him for not 
having made known these facts at an earlier 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 15 

date, so that, the instant the first case oc- 
curred, provision might have been made 
for the removal of the sick beyond the 
city limits, and such other sanitary mea- 
sures adopted as would have prevented 
the fever spreading among us; others are 
blaming him just as loudly for having 
made the declaration he has, at all, speak- 
ing of the doctor as an alarmist, and call- 
ing the fever "the Upshur fever," — affirm- 
ing that, without cause, he has injured the 
business of the city to an amount which 
many thousands will not cover. For my 
own part, I have no doubt that Dr. Up- 
shur has acted conscientiously in this whole 
matter ; nor have I any doubt that he has 
acted rightly, too, and that the yellow fever 
does exist among us at this time. 

If this be so, how has the fever come 
among us? you will ask. In the present 
excited state of the public mind on this 
subject, it is next to impossible to tell 
what to believe and what not. Rumours, 



16 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

almost without number, are afloat; but 
most of them, I presume, so changed and 
distorted, that, could they return to those 
with whom they originated, they would 
not be recognised. Your old friend, T. 
Broughton, Sr.', Editor of the Herald, and 
Secretary of our Board of Health, appears 
to have about as cool a head upon his 
shoulders as any man I meet with ; and as 
I know he has taken pains to get at the 
truth, I regard the statements in his paper 
as containing the most reliable informa- 
tion to be gotten at the present time. In 
his issue of yesterday he states, that about 
ten days ago a number of poor families 
removed from Gosport to "Barry's Eow," 
in our city, — the section to which the 
disease is thus far confined; and that it 
is thought they brought the disease with 
them, some having the poison in their 
system then which has since developed 
itself, and that others have taken the fever 
from them, or perhaps, from the infected 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 17 

clothing and bedding they brought with 
them. 

The origin of the fever in Gosport is 
traced by all, I believe, to the Ben Frank- 
lin, a steamer, bound from the Island of 
St. Thomas, where the fever is prevailing, 
to New York, but compelled to put into 
Hampton Roads in distress. This vessel 
arrived in our waters on the 7th of June, 
and after remaining at quarantine for 
twelve days, came up to Gosport on the 
19th of June, and was at once taken to 
Page and Allen's ship-yard, for the pur- 
pose of having certain repairs made upon 
her. From the time she left St. Thomas, 
she is said to have been in so leaky a con- 
dition as to render constant pumping ne- 
cessary. And it is now reported — upon 
how good authority I cannot learn — that 
two deaths among her crew, which oc- 
curred on her passage, and which her cap- 
tain reported to our health officer as caused 
by other diseases, were in fact deaths from 

2* 



18 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

yellow fever. This much is certain: that 
her passengers left her in Hampton Roads, 
not one of them remaining to meet our 
health officer when he visited her. This, 
together with several other suspicious cir- 
cumstances attending her entrance here, 
led to the exaction of a promise from her 
captain, as a condition for allowing her to 
go up to Gosport, that, in effecting her re- 
pairs, her hold should not be broken up. 
This pledge has been violated ; and the 
first case of fever in Gosport is said to have 
been that of a labourer employed in break- 
ing up her hold, who, after a short illness, 
died on the 8th of July, exhibiting all the 
characteristic symptoms of yellow fever. 
So soon as this case was reported, the vessel 
was ordered back to quarantine, where she 
now lies, with the yellow flag at her mast- 
head. 

Page and Allen's ship-yard is in the 
southern part of Gosport, almost imme- 
diately adjoining the main entrance to the 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 19 

navy-yard. The row of buildings in which 
all the first cases of fever occurred there 
is a row of the same general character with 
"Barry's Row" in our city; — the buildings 
small, sadly out of repair, overcrowded with 
inhabitants, and filthy in the extreme. I 
was told by a gentleman in Portsmouth, 
the other day, that when the authorities of 
that place made an examination of these 
buildings, preparatory to the adoption of 
such sanitary measures as the case might 
call for, they found in one of the tenements 
the dead body of a calf, in a state of partial 
putrefaction. I mention this fact, because 
I believe that it alone will give you a better 
idea of the condition of things in those build- 
ings than, could be given by any descrip-r 
tion in general terms. The dead body of 
a calf rotting in a human dwelling has its 
natural accompaniments, which there is no 
need that I should tell you of. Barry's 
Row, in our city, is of the same general 
character, and, as I know, from having 



20 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

passed it frequently in the course of the 
last two months, in an exceedingly filthy 
condition. 

The infected district in Gosport was fenced 
in some two weeks ago; and until within 
the last week, it was reported by the sa- 
nitary committee of Portsmouth that all 
the cases of fever in Portsmouth could be 
clearly traced to that infected district. 
Within the last week, however, cases have 
occurred which cannot be easily, if at all, 
traced to Gosport ; and the opinion is pretty 
generally entertained that the infection has 
now spread into Portsmouth. 

In our city, the Board of Health had the 
infected district, including Barry's Row and 
the building immediately adjoining, fenced 
in on Monday, and took prompt measures 
for having a temporary hospital erected at 
Oak Grove — a grove just beyond the corpo- 
ration limits, on the north side of the city. 
These buildings are now so nearly com- 
pleted that to-day they are removing the 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 21 

sick to them; hoping by these measures 
to stay the spread of the pestilence among 
us. 

As you would naturally suppose, the an- 
nouncement made on Monday, that the 
yellow fever existed in our midst, caused 
no little excitement among our people ; in 
fact, a much greater excitement than the 
occasion seemed to justify; and many fa- 
milies are already leaving our city. In 
those places in which the yellow fever fre- 
quently prevails, its advent is looked upon 
as so much a matter of course, that, I am 
told, it causes little or no alarm. Not so 
with us. Nearly thirty years have now 
elapsed since it prevailed to any extent in 
Norfolk. A few scattering cases there have 
been, from time to time, such as occur in 
all our commercial cities trading with the 
West Indies; but, then, these cases have 
caused but little alarm, as the disease has 
shown but little disposition to spread from 
them. For my own part, I know not what 



22 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

may be before us, but I cannot help taking 
a more hopeful view of our case than many 
do ; while, at the same time, I must admit 
that there are some things which seem to 
wear a very threatening aspect; and I am 
not much surprised at the panic which has 
arisen among us. Should the yellow fever 
prevail here with any thing like the vio- 
lence it did last year in Savannah, with 
the three long hot months which must in- 
tervene between this and frost to do its 
work in, it must make terrible havoc ; and 
in prospect of such a probability, I can only 
say, " God help us ! for the help of man is 
vain." 

By those who are disposed to take the 
most cheerful view of our case and pros- 
pects, it is said, this fever appears to be 
of a very mild and manageable type. 
" Only seventeen cases in fourteen days, and 
three deaths out of that number/' (Report 
of our Board of Health for to-day.) In 
Gosport, too, the report on the 24th — the 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 23 

last report I have at hand — was that in the 
nineteen days which had then elapsed since 
the first case came under the care of the phy- 
sician, there had been but six deaths, and 
there were then but fifteen cases under treat- 
ment. Since then it has spread into Ports- 
mouth, but has not assumed a malignant 
type anywhere. It is also said that in 
former years, — in 1822 and '26, — when the 
yellow fever last prevailed in Norfolk to 
any extent and in a violent form, it was 
confined to the part of the city south of 
Main Street and west of Market Square, 
no case ever having been known to origi- 
nate out of this, the infected district, in 
those years ; that persons living in that 
district had just to remove to the north of 
Main Street, and they were as safe from 
the fever as they would have been a thou- 
sand miles off. Since then, in conse- 
quence of the growth of our city, the 
part south of Main Street has been almost 
entirely given up to business, four-fifths 



24 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

of our people now residing north of that 
street; and hence, judging from the expe- 
rience of the past, as little likely to take 
the fever here, at home, as they would be 
anywhere. 

By those disposed to take a more gloomy 
new of our prospects, it is said, the 
fever now existing in our midst is not the 
ordinary yellow fever, but the African 
fever, as some say, or, as others say, the 
yellow fever in an epidemic form, differ- 
ing from the ordinary yellow fever just as 
epidemic malignant scarlet fever differs 
from that disease in its ordinary form ; that 
it is a " travelling epidemic," like the 
cholera some years ago ; that it appeared 
first in Rio in 1850, and has been gradu- 
ally making its way northward, along the 
Atlantic coast; that it was this " travel- 
ling epidemic' ' which caused such a terrible 
destruction of life in Savannah, last sum- 
mer; and that its appearance among us 
at this time is in accordance with pre die- 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 25 

tions made several years ago by physicians 
who had made the " epidemic yellow fever" 
their study. And further, it is said, it has 
now located itself in a new spot, entirely 
beyond the old infected district, and in a 
spot very well adapted to spread it gene- 
rally though the city. 

What to think of our prospects, as already 
intimated, I hardly know. Could I be per- 
suaded that this was the same disease 
which decimated Savannah last summer, I 
should rejoice to see every one of our citi- 
zens who could, flee to some place of safety 
"until the storm be over-past;" for in 
Savannah the only safety seemed to be in 
flight. But all the known facts respecting 
the origin of this fever among us seem 
utterly at variance with the idea that this 
is the "travelling epidemic" which some 
suppose it to be. It seems clearly to have 
been imported in the Ben Franklin ; 
and I see no reason to think that, if that 
ill-fated vessel had never been suffered to 

3 



26 THE SUMMER OF TIIE PESTILENCE. 

come into our harbour, or even if the 
pledge given by her captain, that her hold 
should not be broken up, had been ob- 
served, there would have been a case of 
yellow fever among us now. It was by 
the breaking up of the hold of that steamer 
that the fatal miasm was let loose which has 
caused all the threatening consequences we 
see. It may be that there are facts which, 
if I knew them, would change my opinion 
on this point; and I know that it is a 
thing improbable in itself that, in the pre- 
sent excited state of public feeling, and in 
the midst of the almost innumerable reports 
which are passing from mouth to mouth, 
we should be able to separate the true from 
the false, or to get at all the facts which 
bear upon this question. The opinion 
which I have expressed, therefore, is no- 
thing more than an opinion based upon the 
facts now known to me, and as I have 
stated them above. 
Besides all this, I have another ground 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 27 

for Loping that the yellow fever will not 
assume an epidemic form among us — and 
that is, the present condition of our city. 
As you well know, within the last ten years 
our streets have been so generally paved, 
that Norfolk is now one of the most tho- 
roughly-paved cities in the Union; and 
although the site of the city is level, the 
streets have been so carefully graded that 
the water runs off almost as soon as it does 
in Richmond, with all its hills. In conse- 
quence of this, and the general substitu- 
tion of rain-water for the brackish well- 
water once used, a careful comparison of 
our bills of mortality with those of other 
cities will show, that for the ten years last 
past Norfolk has been one of the healthi- 
est cities on the Atlantic seaboard. At 
the present time the general health of the 
place is as good as usual. And although 
our city is no exception to the general rule 
that, in every place of any size, there are 
particular localities, such as Barry's Row, 



28 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

where poverty and filth seem to hold posses- 
sion by a sort of "fee simple" yet our city 
is, at the present time, by no means a dirty 
one. I have heard some persons express 
a different opinion on this last-mentioned 
point; but this, I think, is owing to the 
fact that the existence of the fever in our 
midst has made them more sharp-sighted 
than usual; and they see and notice filth 
now which, at other times, would escape 
their notice altogether. 

For all these reasons, I could wish that 
our people who are now leaving could take 
a different view of matters, and quietly re- 
main at home ; yet I am not willing to 
take the responsibility of advising any to 
remain. It is enough for me to decide that 
question for myself; and my own con- 
victions of duty were never plainer than 
they are at this time, that home is my 
place, come what may. The physician 
and the Christian pastor are, by their pro- 
fession, called to minister to the sick, the 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 29 

dying, and the afflicted ; and, certainly, a 
time of pestilence, when their services are 
most needed, is no time for them to flee. 
Not that there may not be, in particular 
instances, circumstances which may render 
it the duty of a physician or a pastor to 
leave home, even at such a time; but the 
presumptions are, in both cases alike, all 
against their leaving. The question which 
they should ask is not Why should I stay? 
but Why should I not stay? and no mere 
danger to themselves personally should 
enter into the decision of this question. 
For myself, I can say that, in the prospect 
of the possible spread of the fever through- 
out our city, I have no anxious thought. 
The pestilence, when raging in its most 
terrible violence, and when man stands 
appalled before it, is yet ever under God's 
control, and can claim no victims but 
such as are given it. That mighty God 
I have been taught by his spirit, I trust, 
to look up to as "my Father in heaven.'' 

3* 



30 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

His I am, and him I have vowed to serve. 
If he has work for me here, in time to 
come, he can protect me ; if he has not, 
and my work on earth is nearly done, 
then sooner comes, I hope, the perfect, 
blessed rest of heaven. 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 31 



LETTER n. 

SPREAD OP THE FEVER — ITS MILD TYPE VISIT TO PORTS- 
MOUTH DESERTED STATE OF THAT PLACE PANIC CAUSES 

OF THIS PANIC — QUARANTINE REGULATIONS QUARANTINE 

ORDER OF WELDEN DEATH IN THE STREET — HOWARD 

ASSOCIATION FORMED — BURNING OF BARRY'S ROW — DAT 
OF PRAYER APPOINTED, 

Monday, Aug. 13, 1855. 

Sixce I last wrote you, the yellow fever — 
for all regard the disease prevailing among 
us as the yellow fever now — has continued 
to spread in our city. As compared with 
the fever prevailing here in former years 
and in other cities, this appears to be the 
disease in a mild and manageable form. 
According to the best information I can 
get, although it has now existed in our 
city for nearly a month, there had been, 
up to Saturday last, but about sixty cases 
treated by our physicians, and out of those 



32 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

but about twenty had proved fatal. The 
fever has spread, from the point at which 
it first appeared, into the infected dis- 
trict of former years, and several cases 
have occurred on Wide Water Street, west 
of Commerce Street. This was to be 
expected, and I believe was anticipated 
by all. Thus far, no case has occurred in 
any other part of the city which is not 
clearly traceable to the infected district or 
to Portsmouth in its origin; and the 
deaths have been almost altogether among 
our foreign population, where want of ac- 
climation, intemperance, poverty, and filth, 
mark them out as the proper food for any 
such disease. 

Several deaths which have occurred at 
the Oak- Grove hospital, and reckoned 
among the twenty, are clearly attributable 
to the obstinate imprudence of the patients. 
On yesterday I was told of one who had 
passed the crisis of the disease, and had 
every prospect of a speedy recovery, who, 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 33 

in some way, procured a bottle of whiskey, 
and, having drunk to intoxication, was sub- 
sequently found, some twenty yards from 
the hospital, lying on the bare ground, at ten 
o'clock at night. As a matter of course, 
he was dead before morning. But two 
cases have occurred in my congregation, 
both now decidedly convalescent. 

In Portsmouth the infection has spread, 
until now the whole central portion of the 
town is considered infected. On Tuesday of 
last week, hearing that Rev. Isaac Handy, 
pastor of the Middle Street Presbyterian 
church, was sick with the fever, I went 
over to Portsmouth to see him. It was the 
first time I had been there for several weeks, 
and I was most forcibly struck with the 
scene of desolation presented on every side. 
It was a clear, bright, sunshiny day, not 
warmer than usual for the season; and as 
I passed through our streets on my way 
to the ferry-wharf, although there was not 
the same bustle and appearance of activity 



34 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

in business which I have often seen, (many 
of our citizens having gone away,) yet 
every thing seemed to wear a cheerful 
aspect; and I doubt whether a stranger 
would have noticed any thing to remind 
him of the existence of the yellow fever 
in our city. I felt more cheerful, myself, 
than I had for several days past, — the report 
of our Board of Health, published that 
morning, giving "no deaths'' for the day 
before. I heard the remark made by a 
gentleman I met, " Now that the more ex- 
citable portion of our people have fled, we 
shall have a quiet time again.' ' 

On landing on the Portsmouth side of 
the river, all seemed changed. There had 
been no change in the weather ; and yet 
the atmosphere presented a hazy appear- 
ance, much like that which you have often 
noticed during our Indian summer. The 
streets were literally deserted. In passing 
from the ferry-wharf to Mr. Handy's house, 
I had to go through fully half the length 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 35 

of the main street of Portsmouth; and 
yet in all that distance I met but one 
white person, and saw but one store 
open. As I passed the end of the 
market-house, looking down toward Gos- 
port, in the part of the market usually 
crowded by the country-people, I saw but 
two market-carts. The negro drivers of 
th6se carts were sitting on the curb-stone 
beside them, and they, with their horses, 
looked as if wilted down by the heat ; and 
I saw no one there present to buy their 
marketing. 

In returning, I took a somewhat cir- 
cuitous route, going around by the court- 
house, then taking my way through parts 
of the town which I had not seen in going. 
Everywhere the same deserted appearance 
met the eye. I noticed in one place a man 
knocking at the door of a house; and, in- 
stead of the door being opened, a woman 
appeared at an upper window and conversed 
with him from thence, as if afraid to come 



36 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

any nearer to him, lest she might take the 
infection. But that which arrested my at- 
tention more particularly than any other 
evidence of the deserted state of the place 
was the fact that, although it was about ten 
o'clock in the day, the principal sound I 
heard was the crowing of the cock; and 
this I heard on every side, and with all the 
distinctness with which it may be heard in 
the otherwise unbroken stillness of early 
dawn. Later in the day, when man has gone 
forth to his labour, the sound of busi- 
ness and the noise of rattling wheels in 
ordinary circumstances completely over- 
power it. At the ferry-house I found three 
or four citizens of Portsmouth, and their 
only subject of conversation was the sick- 
ness and death of their friends and neigh- 
bours. One, an undertaker, told me he 
had received orders for seven coffins that 
morning. 

I know not to what extent my own feel- 
ings may have given their tinge to the 



TIIE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 37 

scene. I describe it just as it presented itself 
to me. I have been in Portsmouth several 
times since ; and the appearance of the 
place, instead of becoming less, is becoming, 
if possible, more gloomy than it was then. 
Three-fourths of the population are said to 
have fled. This, I am inclined to think, is 
an over-estimate; but certain it is, Ports- 
mouth presents the most deserted, forlorn 
appearance of any place I have ever seen. 
Never before have I had as lively a concep- 
tion of the utter desolation of a plague- 
stricken city as now. 

Such was the state of things on Tuesday 
last. Since then, Norfolk has been rapidly 
assuming the same deserted appearance with 
her sister across the river. The day before 
yesterday, the Editor of the Herald ex- 
pressed the opinion that one-half of our 
population had gone. The panic, during 
the last four or five days, has been 
greater even than it was ten days ago. 
You will say, why is this, if the disease is 



38 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

of a mild type, and spreading so slowly as 
represented in last Saturday's report of the 
Board of Health — not more than sixty cases 
and twenty deaths in a month ? This panic 
is owing in part to the apprehension excited 
by the present condition of things in Gos- 
port and Portsmouth, wiiere the fever at 
first seemed to spread as slowly and to pre- 
sent the same mild and manageable type 
it now does with us, but where, within the 
last ten days, it has spread rapidly and as- 
sumed a malignant form. The same causes, 
it is said, which have produced that change 
there, must soon produce a similar change 
here. It is owing mainly, however, I think, 
to the quarantine regulations, by which our 
communication with all the cities and towns 
around us, and even with some of the coun- 
ties to w T hich our citizens would naturally 
flee, has been cut oft', or rather, I ought to 
say, has been attempted to be cut oft*, — for to 
sever all such communication effectually, in 
a country like ours, is an impossibility. 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 39 

New York took the lead in this matter, 
issuing her quarantine order on the 30th of 
July. Since then, almost every mail has 
brought us the information that one place 
after another — Suffolk, Richmond, Peters- 
burg, Welden, Hampton, Washington, Bal- 
timore — has shut us out. The counties on 
the Eastern Shore of Virginia and Matthews 
county r to which a boat runs tri-weekly 
from our city, are an exception to the ge- 
neral rule. They, instead of adopting qua- 
rantine regulations, shutting us out, have 
generously thrown their doors wide open, 
and sent us a hearty invitation to come. 
The Hon. Henry A. "Wise, our governor-elect, 
I am told, has not only thrown his house 
open, but has actually fitted up his out- 
houses, so that he may accommodate as many 
as possible, particularly of the poor, whom 
the pestilence may have driven from their 
homes. For this I say, " God bless him !" 
This kindness comes- to us like the summer 
shower to the parched field in time of uni- 



40 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

versal drought — all the more precious be- 
cause unexpected. Along with this shut- 
ting of us out from one place after another 
to which we might have turned, there has 
prevailed, from day to day, the report, now 
partly realized, that each trip of the boats 
regularly plying to and from our city would 
be their last; and thus a fear has been 
excited on the part of many, that, if the 
present opportunity of getting away was 
not improved, all means of flight would 
soon be wanting. 

In these ways, a panic has been created 
and kept up for the last four or five days, 
even greater than that caused by the first 
announcement that the fever was among 
us. It has not been any appearance of 
present danger, so much as the idea of 
being shut in to grapple with the pesti- 
lence, no matter how deadly it might be- 
come, — not so much any present apprehen- 
sion as the prospect of having every way 
of escape closed, even though our city 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 41 

should become one vast charnel-house, — 
which has sent our people fugitives in every 
direction. I have said above that it was 
impossible, in such a country as ours, to 
shut out fugitives from a city by any qua- 
rantine regulations which that city may 
adopt. Since Baltimore has quarantined 
us, our citizens take the boat for the East- 
ern Shore in the morning, and, returning 
on that boat in the afternoon, enter the 
Baltimore boat, as from the Eastern Shore, 
and thus pass on unchallenged, uninter- 
rupted; the only practical effect of the 
quarantine being, by giving the fugitives 
a whole day's exposure in crossing and re- 
crossing the bay, to increase the likelihood 
of their sickening in Baltimore, if they 
have the poison lurking in their systems. 
I have never had much opportunity of 
judging, by personal observation, of the 
danger of fugitives, such as those leaving 
us from day to day, spreading the yel- 
low fever in the places into which they 
4* 



42 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

may enter. But I well recollect, although 
then a child, that, in 1822, when the fever 
prevailed in New York City, great numbers 
of the inhabitants of the city came out to 
Bloomfield, New Jersey, where I was then 
living ; and one, at the least, died of the 
fever there, and yet no case originated in 
the village. And I know, too, that during 
the last summer a French steamer came 
into our waters, with the yellow fever 
among her crew, and that some seventy 
cases were treated at the Naval Hos- 
pital, just across the river from Norfolk; 
and yet no one, either in the vicinity of 
the hospital or in our city, took the fever 
from them. 

Speaking of these quarantine regulations, 
what think you of the following order 
adopted by the town authorities of Welden ? 
I copy from one of our daily papers: — " Or- 
dered — That if any person or persons shall 
visit the town of "Welden, within fifteen 
days after such person or persons shall have 



TIIE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 43 

been in such infected cities, such person, 
if white, shall be fined one hundred dollars 
for every day he or she may remain in the 
town of AVelden. And if a slave, the owner 
shall be fined fifty dollars, (if within the 
knowledge of the owner;) if not, nine-and- 
thirty lashes on his or her bare back. If free 
coloured, shall be fined fifty dollars, or shall 
receive nine-and-thirty lashes" That is, in 
substance, if any poor negro, likely to have 
the fever in his blood, shall enter our town 
of Welclen, — where God has laid his afflict- 
ing hand, — we'll strip to the skin and lay 
the lash, and then turn the fugitive out into 
the swamps to die. And this from a south- 
ern town, too. Verily, if I did not know 
better, I should be inclined to believe some 
of the "Uncle Tom" representations of 
southern men and southern manners. Ter- 
ror must have driven the people of Welden 
mad when they adopted such an order as 
this. 

And terror seems to have driven some 



44 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

of our people mad, too. On yesterday 
morning, a poor Irishman, of the name of 
Stapleton, was seen to come staggering up 
toward the door of Dr. Constable's office, 
and there he fell, and, before any one could 
get to him, was dead. Subsequent inquiry 
disclosed the fact, that he had been a boarder 
in a boarding-house in the lower part of the 
city, and there had taken the fever. The 
family who kept the boarding-house, be- 
coming terrified, after a day or two went 
off, leaving him sick in one of the upper 
rooms of the house, with no one to attend 
him, not even to give him a glass of water, 
and giving information to no one, in so 
far as can now be learned, of the utterly 
helpless condition in which they left him. 
When poor Stapleton discovered his de- 
serted condition, as is supposed, he got up 
and dressed himself, and started for Dr. 
Constable's office, that he might obtain 
some relief. His strength held out until 
lie reached the door, and there he fell and 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 45 

died in the street, before any one could get 
to him or learn what was the matter. And 
what makes the case the more sad is that 
he is said to have many friends at home ; 
but here — he was a stranger in a strange 
land. The formation of a "Howard Asso- 
ciation" in our city was announced in our 
papers this morning; and surely, when 
such cases as this of Stapleton can occur in 
our midst, it is high time we had a Howard 
Association, or something of the kind, for 
the protection of the sick and suffering 
from the inhumanity of men mad through 
terror. 

You will have learned through the pub- 
lic prints, before this letter reaches you, 
that Barry's Eow — the row of buildings 
in which the fever first appeared — was 
burned down on the night of Tuesday last. 
There can be no doubt, I think, that the 
buildings were set on fire, though by whom, 
I suppose, will never be known. The alarm 
was given while my family were at the 



46 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

tea-table, and on going to the front doo- 
I saw at once where the fire was. I do 
not often go to fires, but in this instance, 
having a poor member of my church living 
in the immediate vicinity of the burning 
buildings, I went for the purpose of render- 
ing her any assistance she might be in need 
of. On reaching the place, I found the 
upper end of the row fully on .fire ; and, I 
suppose, not less than three thousand per- 
sons standing as idle lookers-on. The fire- 
companies had their engines all there, to 
protect the houses around, but not a drop 
of water were they attempting to throw 
upon the burning buildings; and thus, I 
am told, they continued to stand until the 
whole row was consumed. The feeling of 
the crowd you will gather from this fact 
alone. 

Judging from what I had heard during 
the day, this feeling was owing not to any 
idea that by burning these buildings the 
progress of the fever would be checked, but 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 47 

to a report currently believed — how true the 
report is I cannot say, for at such a time as 
this it is impossible to tell what rumours 
are worthy of credit and what not — that 
after the city had been at the expense of 
having all the inhabitants of "the row," 
well and sick, removed, and had boarded 
up the streets in the immediate vicinity, 
their owner has suffered other poor families 
from Gosport to move in, there to take the 
fever, and thus become a further source of 
danger as well as expense to the city, and 
at the same time lose their own lives. This 
report, whether true or not, seemed to be 
generally believed; and the feeling of in- 
dignation which it excited caused the peo- 
ple to stand by, idle spectators, while the 
buildings were consumed. 

I mention this simply for the purpose of 
giving you correct information respecting 
this occurrence, and not for the purpose of 
justifying the act. Even granting all that 
was reported to be true, it will not justify 



48 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

the burning of the buildings in the way in 
which they were burned ; and I greatly fear 
that some of those who stood by approving 
may yet have occasion to repent the counte- 
nance they have given to lawless violence. 
In the unprotected condition in which our 
city must soon be, if the fever should 
rage here as it is in Portsmouth now, the 
effect of such a precedent ag this none can 
tell. 

To-morrow has been set apart by our 
mayor as a day of humiliation and prayer, 
in prospect of the danger which now 
threatens us. Oh that the humiliation of 
our people might be like that of Nineveh, 
at the preaching of Jonah, so that "God 
might repent him of the evil which he had 
said that he will do unto us, and do it not" ! 



TIIE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 49 



LETTER m. 

FIRST DEATH AMONG THE MEMBERS OF THE PRESBYTERIAN 

CHURCH ARRIVAL OF PHYSICIANS AND NURSES FROM 

ABROAD REMOVAL OF THE HOSPITAL — REPORTED 

FLIGHT OF THE PROTESTANT CLERGY TRUE STATEMENT. 

Thursday, Aug. 23, 1855. 

The fever is yet spreading in our city, 
and yesterday the first death from the fever 
among the members of my church occurred. 
Would that I could hope it would prove 
the last! but I cannot; for several other 
of our members are now extremely ill. 
The one that has died was my nephew, 
Edmund James, and he died in my house. 
On Saturday last we had a cold, stormy day; 
and, on returning from some pastoral visits, 
about twelve o'clock, I found that Edmund 
had come home sick a little while before, 
with all the symptoms of yellow fever — 
violent pains in the head and back, a yellow 



50 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

infusion in the eyes, a dark coating down 
the middle of the tongue, while the edges 
of the tongue appeared almost raw, and a 
very rapid pulse. I procured medical aid 
for him at once ; and, through the kindness 
of the Howard Association, the services of 
an experienced nurse also. From the first 
his case presented very bad symptoms, and 
his disease progressed steadily and rapidly 
to a fatal determination. On yesterday 
morning, about eleven o'clock, he died. 
Thus has our Heavenly Father taken one 
suddenly, in the very prime of manhood, — 
taken him, I trust, to that land where there 
is no more death. A little more than a year 
ago, he made a public profession of religion, 
connecting himself with our church ; and 
since then his Christian walk has been wit- 
ness to the sincerity of his profession. One 
of the last to enter among us, he is the first 
to be taken. 

With several other young men, his com- 
panions, Edmund had taken part in watch- 



THE SUMMER OF TIIE PESTILENCE. 51 

ing by night with a friend, sick with typhoid 
fever. This friend was lying sick in a part 
of the city to which the infection had spread 
some ten days ago, as is now perfectly evi- 
dent from the number of cases occurring 
there, although this was not thought to be 
so at the time. In this way it was, I think, 
he took the fever — and not by contagion, 
from any person having the disease — since 
every one of the young men who took part 
with him as watchers, during the last ten 
days, is now down with the fever. 

Several physicians from abroad — physi- 
cians of experience in the treatment of 
yellow fever — have come to our relief within 
the last few days ; and I am glad to find 
that those having most experience in the 
matter, and whose opinions therefore are 
entitled to most weight, do not consider 
it a contagious disease. This is contrary 
to the opinion I have always entertained 
— though, I must confess, my opinion on 
the subject has been one held without 



52 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

my being able to give any good reason 
therefor, excepting that it was the opinion 
commonly current throughout the coun- 
try. If they are right in this point, it is 
a matter of great importance that the 
popular belief should be corrected; for 
some, like poor Stapleton, whose case I men- 
tioned in my last letter, have died in our 
midst, through neglect, arising altogether 
from fear on the part of those who would 
have attended to them that, by so doing, 
they would themselves contract the disease. 
On this point, I intend, should my life be 
spared, carefully to observe facts, that here- 
after I may be able to give a reason for any 
opinion I shall entertain. Thus far I have 
seen nothing irreconcilable with the idea 
that yellow fever spreads through an in- 
fected atmosphere only, and not by con- 
tagion, using both these terms in their 
popular sense. 

I mentioned above that several physicians 
from abroad had come to our relief. They 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 53 

liavc not come before they were greatly 
needed. Several of our own physicians are 
away, and those that are here are overwork- 
ing themselves ; and one, Dr. Sylvester, has 
already died. In this disease, prompt at- 
tention and frequent visits from the phy- 
sician, that the changing phases of the fever 
may be carefully noted, and threatening 
danger guarded against, seem to be of the 
utmost importance : — the difference of a few 
hours in procuring medical aid often mak- 
ing the difference between recovery and 
death. Careful nursing also seems to be 
a matter of great importance; and I am 
happy to say that several nurses from abroad 
have recently arrived, most of them em- 
ployed for the present at the hospital. 

The hospital has been removed from Oak- 
Grove to Lambert's Point, some five miles 
down the river. This change was made 
mainly for the sake of the better accommo- 
dations which could be obtained there, in 
the buildings belonging to the old race- 



54 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

course. The new location of the hospital 
is at a greater distance from the city than 
the old, and, therefore, not as easy of access ; 
but the disadvantages resulting from this 
source, it is thought, are more than made 
up for by the purer air which the sick will 
there enjoy, Lambert's Point being on a 
wide part of the river and fully open to the 
breeze. Those who have been removed 
there, thus far, have done much better than 
at Oak-Grove : a larger proportion of them 
having recovered, or being now decidedly 
convalescent. I find, however, a great pre- 
judice existing, especially among the poor, 
against going to the hospital; and this 
owiug mainly to the idea that the patients at 
an hospital are considered by the physicians 
as fit subjects to experiment upon — an idea 
to which the conduct of those having charge 
of our hospital certainly has given no coun- 
tenance. 

Our citizens continue still from day to 
day to flee, until now, I do not think that 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 55 

more than one-third of our white popula- 
tion remain in the city. Of the coloured 
people but few have gone, partly on account 
of the difficulty of getting away, but more 
especially because the yellow fever is a dis- 
ease from which they have, comparatively, 
very little to fear. In New Orleans and 
other southern cities, coloured people are 
pretty generally exempt from attacks of 
yellow fever. Up to this present time 
there have been some cases of fever among 
this class, in our city, and several deaths; 
but yet not so many as to form any very 
marked exception to the general rule esta- 
blished by the experience of cities south 
of us. 

You are aware that most of the business 
of our city is done on West Main Street 
and the part of the city between it and the 
river. The infection seems now to have 
spread through all this part of the town; 
and, as a consequence, it is almost entirely 
deserted by our business men. Our post- 



56 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

office was moved up to the Academy build- 
ing on the 10th; and almost all the new 
advertisements which appear in our daily 
papers now are to the effect that such or 
such persons may be found at their resi- 
dences, or at some place they have tempo- 
rarily rented, north of Main Street, their 
business stand being closed for the present. 
This morning I received a letter froni my 
old friend and class-mate, Dr. Leyburn, of 
Philadelphia," calling my attention to a re- 
port which he tells me has been widely cir- 
culated in the papers published at a distance, 
— that the Protestant clergy in Norfolk and 
Portsmouth had all, or nearly all, deserted 
their posts, leaving their congregations to 
shift for themselves as best they could in 
this time of pestilence ; while the Catholic 
clergy w^ere nobly confronting the threaten- 
ing danger, and ministering to the ne- 
cessities of the sick in so far as was in 
their power. For two weeks past, I have 
been so constantly engaged in visiting the 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 57 

sick and afflicted, and in helping to bury 
the dead, that I have not had either the 
time or the disposition to read the secular 
papers ; and, until Dr. Leyburn's letter in- 
formed me of the fact, I was not aware that 
such a report was going the round of the 
papers ; and even now, did I consult my 
own feelings, I should take no notice of it. 
What man may say of me appears a matter 
of very little moment, provided I can keep 
a conscience void of offence before God. 
Unless a miracle preserve us, when the pes- 
tilence shall have passed there will be more 
than one green mound in our cemetery to 
bear witness to the falsehood of this report 
respecting the Protestant clergy of Nor- 
folk. 

I have just written to Dr. Leyburn, giving 
him, in answer to his inquiry, a statement of 
the facts in this case; and as you may not 
have read the report referred to, I will give 
the same statement in substance to you. 
And first — that I may do justice to a faith- 



58 ' THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

ful pastor, although his course has not 
been called in question in this report — let 
me say that Rev. M. O'Keefe, the priest in 
charge of the only Catholic church in Nor- 
folk, has been labouring most indefatigably 
among the sick, ever since the fever first 
appeared. As I mentioned in a former 
letter, the fever at first was confined almost 
entirely to the foreign portion of our popu- 
lation. Most of these were Catholics in 
their religious belief. To their own clergy- 
man they naturally looked; and he, dis- 
regarding all considerations of personal 
danger, went promptly to them and minis- 
tered to their necessities. Thus much truth 
demands should be said of him ; and now, 
justice to others requires that I add that 
the Protestant clergy here, when the fever 
extended to the Protestant portion of our 
population, visited the sick and ministered 
to them just as promptly. 

AVe have in Norfolk, besides the Catholic 
church, two Episcopal, two Methodist, two 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 59 

Baptist, one Methodist Protestant, and one 
Presbyterian church, and two churches for 
the coloured people, having white pastors. 
Dr. Minigerode, the pastor of Christ Church, 
the largest Episcopal church in the city, had 
started for Germany before the fever first 
appeared in Gosport, and, in all likelihood, 
has not yet even heard of its existence 
in Norfolk. His place is temporarily sup- 
plied by Rev. Lewis "Walke, now labour- 
ing faithfully from day to day among 
the sick and dying. One of the Baptist 
churches is vacant, in consequence of the 
resignation of its pastor, some two months 
ago. Rev. T. G. Jones, the pastor of the 
other Baptist church, is now absent, I be- 
lieve, on account of the state of his wife's 
health ; and thus both the Baptist churches 
are without their pastors ; but a young Bap- 
tist minister — Rev. Wm, C. Bagnall, a native 
of our city — is here, and labouring, in so far 
as his strength will allow, among the mem- 
bers of those churches and congregations. 



60 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

Eev. J. G. Whitfield, the pastor of the Method- 
ist Protestant church, (the smallest church 
in the city,) is at the same time president of 
the Virginia Conference, and required, in 
the discharge of his official duties, to spend 
the summer in visiting the churches through- 
out the state. The pastor of one of the 
coloured churches is here ; whether the pastor 
of the other is I do not know, but I believe 
he is not at this time. The four remaining 
pastors are all here. Remembering, now, 
that this is the season of the year w T hen city 
pastors are accustomed to leave their charges 
for a season, that they may recruit and be 
the better prepared for their more arduous 
duties in the winter, it seems to me that it 
is rather remarkable that, for ten churches, 
one being vacant and another temporarily 
vacant by previous arrangement, we should 
have seven ministers here, actively engaged 
in the discharge of ministerial duty. I will 
venture to say that at this present time 
neither Baltimore, nor Philadelphia, nor 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 61 

New York, can show as full a supply for 
their pulpits as Norfolk can ; and I will 
venture to say, further, that in our own city 
there is no one class of the population — not 
even the physicians, nor the undertakers — of 
which so large a proportion have remained 
at their posts, as of the clergy. 

I cannot speak so particularly of others; 
but this I can say for myself, that shortly 
after our Howard Association was formed, 
I offered my services to them, in any way 
in which I, as a minister of the gospel, could 
be useful ; and I am confident, from what 
I have seen of them, that the other Protest- 
ant ministers here, if they have not formally 
offered their services, are just as ready to 
render aid as I am. This I know, that on 
yesterday, when the extreme sickness and 
death of my nephew prevented my visit- 
ing as usual, Rev. Lewis Walke came and 
kindly offered to visit any sick in my con- 
gregation that I thought needed a pastoral 



62 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

visit. All this I say, not boastingly, I trust, 
but simply to correct a false report which it 
seems has been widely circulated to our dis- 
credit, and, what is a matter of far graver 
importance, to the discredit of that Chris- 
tianity which we profess. In staying, we 
are doing nothing but what duty plainly 
demands of us. 

Such reports bear hardest upon those 
pastors who in God's providence are absent, 
the fact of their absence being made known 
without the reasons therefor, and thus the 
world left to infer that they have fled through 
unmanly, unchristian fear of the pestilence. 
Surely, no reasonable person can think 
that there may not be circumstances which 
render it the duty of a pastor to leave his 
church even in such times. Surely, no 
reasonable person will contend that a pastor 
is chained to his post, as a criminal to the 
stake. Christianity, true Christianity, does 
not aim to make its votaries — either clergy 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 63 

or laity — heroes of romance, but simply 
good men — good men in all the relations of 
life ; and I can well conceive of circum- 
stances which would make it just as plainly 
my duty to leave this city as it is now my 
duty to remain. 



64 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 



LETTER IY. 

EFFECTS OF COLD STORMS IN THE SPREAD OF THE FEVER 

PEOPLE BEWILDERED BURIAL OF REV. A. DIBBRELL~ 

DEATH OF MAYOR WOODIS — AID FROM ABROAD — ESTA- 
BLISHMENT OF THE HOWARD HOSPITAL. 

Saturday, Sept 1, 1855. 

The pestilence, long darkling over us, has 
now burst upon us in its terrible might. On 
Tuesday last, we had another of those chill 
northeasterly storms, so frequent for five or 
six weeks past, and although at the begin- 
ning of the week there were not over three 
or four hundred cases of fever in the city, 
there are now, I think, not less than from 
twelve to fifteen hundred. 

I had supposed, from all I had heard and 
read of yellow fever in other places, that it 
spread most rapidly in dry, hot weather. I 
am certain that I have seen it spoken of, 
in some medical work, — although I cannot 



TUB SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 65 

now tell just where, — as a disease belonging 
to seasons of drought. This is not the 
case here. The present summer has been 
throughout what farmers call an unusually 
"seasonable" one; and I doubt whether a 
finer crop of corn was ever made, in this 
part of the country, than will be made 
this summer. We have had hot days from 
time to time; but, as compared with other 
summers, since I have been a resident of 
Norfolk, not so much extremely hot weather 
as is usual. 

During dry, warm days, the fever has 
seemed to spread but slowly; but when 
these chill northeasterly storms have come, 
it has taken whole sections of the city in 
a night. During the storm occurring the 
early part of this week, the infection has 
spread through the very heart of our city ; 
and now they are sick by households, over 
one-half of that portion of the city to which 
the fever never extended in former years. 
In my own congregation there are some 



66 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

houses in which they are all sick; and there 
are many others which have suddenly been 
converted into hospitals — hardly enough 
well ones being left to attend upon the sick. 
Whether these cold storms ought properly 
to be considered the immediate agents 
in the spread of the infection, or whether 
that infection has spread during the dry, 
warm weather, the only effect of the cold 
storm being, by inducing a chill, to bring 
out the latent disease, I will not attempt to 
decide ; but this is certainly true, that it is 
during these storms it appears to spread 
most rapidly. On last Tuesday night, 
judging from what I felt myself and from 
what I have since learned from others, 
there were very few that were not con- 
scious of the influence of the storm. It 
did seem as if the flap of the wing of the 
unseen pestilence sent a chill to almost every 
heart; and the terrible consequences of 
this we have now before our eyes. 

You have, no doubt, seen persons, when 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. G7 

some great calamity has come suddenly upon 
them, — although all is not lost, and there 
is yet hope, if they will exert themselves, — 
sitting down in a sort of sullen indifference, 
bewildered. I know not how r better to describe 
the state of things existing among us at this 
time than by saying that our people seem to 
be bewildered; and, could you be here, and 
go around through the city, you would not 
be surprised that such was the fact. 

As illustrating this state of things, I 
may mention an incident which occurred 
but a few hours ago. I had gone to attend 
the funeral of the Eev. A. Dibbrell, pastor 
of one of our Methodist churches, — a man 
respected and beloved in our community, 
and well deserving the sentiments with 
which he was regarded. He had fallen 
at his post, dying in the midst of his 
people. But so few of the members of 
his church are now here, and of this few, 
so many are either sick or attending upon 
the sick in their own families, that there 



68 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

were hardly enough present to perform the 
ordinary offices on such an occasion ; and 
his own son and I helped to put his coffin 
in the hearse. 

On Thursday morning I called at a house 
occupied by two families, and where one 
in each family had been sick for several 
clays, and, on entering, found every mem- 
ber of both families prostrated by the fever. 
Coming to the door, and seeing one of our 
physicians passing, I called to him, and 
begged him to come in and prescribe for 
the sick, if nothing more, and received 
for answer, "I have already so many cases 
in hand that I cannot conscientiously 
undertake another;" and, showing me his 
memorandum-book, I saw at a glance that 
he spoke nothing but the simple truth ; 
and he was one of our younger phy- 
sicians, having but a limited practice in 
ordinary times. Our older physicians, and 
most of those from a distance who have 
come to our aid, have now so much to do 



THE SUMMER OF TIIE PESTILENCE. 69 

that it is sometimes impossible to get a 
physician for hours. What we should have 
done had none come from abroad, I cannot 
tell. 

On last Sabbath, Hunter Woodis, Esq., 
our excellent mayor, died and was buried. 
His loss was a loss indeed to our city. My 
personal acquaintance with him was but 
slight ; but this I know, that since the 
fever commenced among us he has been 
indefatigable in the discharge of duty, — 
especially active in doing all that he could 
for the sick — never seeming to regard for 
a moment the personal danger to which be 
thus exposed himself. While he lived, 
although many of our public officers are 
away, our government had a head, and 
there was some one to whom we could 
look for guidance. His death is to us a 
great misfortune ; for at a time like this 
one such man is in himself a host. Our 
good friend, Dr. X. C. Whitehead, as senior 
magistrate, now discharges the duties of 



70 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

mayor ; and, I need not say to one so well 
acquainted with him as you are, will 
perform the duties of that office most 
faithfully, in so far as it is in his power 
to do. But he is not the young, active 
man that Woodis was, and, having at the 
same time the duties of President of the 
Farmers' Bank upon him, he cannot give 
the time and attention to them which 
Woodis both could and did give. 

I rejoice to learn that most of the towns 
and cities around us have repealed their 
quarantine orders, so that those who are 
able and disposed to flee can do so without 
having to take circuitous routes or depart 
from that straightforward honesty which 
Christian men should always maintain. 
When I saw so many going away, a few 
weeks ago, I felt disposed to find fault 
with them ; and although not willing to 
take the responsibility of advising any to 
stay, I yet wished that they would for 
themselves decide to remain where they 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 71 

were. I feel very differently now. Had 
all remained, and from among them a 
proportional number been taken sick, as 
undoubtedly would have been the case, I 
know not what we could have done. As 
it is, there are more sick than those who 
have as yet' escaped — with all the aid of 
physicians and nurses from abroad — can 
properly attend to ; and some are dying 
just for want of proper care. Had all 
remained, and we had three sick where 
there is now one, our case must have been 
greatly worse than it is. In the flight of 
those that have gone I see most clearly 
God's good providence; and the panic, 
under the influence of which they fled, I 
look upon as like "the sound of a great 
host" heard by the Assyrian army encamped 
before Samaria — God's means for scattering 
them that they might be saved. 

We are beginning to receive aid, in 
money and provisions, from abroad also; 
and this help is not coming before it was 



72 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

greatly needed. Our bakeries are all 
closed, and yesterday not a loaf of bread 
was to be bought ; our provision-stores 
are almost all closed, our market pretty 
much deserted; and I had begun to fear 
that we should have great scarcity, if not 
famine, to contend with, as* well as the 
pestilence. The poor were beginning 
really to suffer for food. The sick now 
suffer, in some instances, for food suited 
to their circumstances ; and for the dead — 
it is becoming a matter of great difficulty 
to procure coffins in which to bury them. 
Should any thing like the same proportion 
die from among those now sick which have 
died hitherto, I fear we shall be driven to 
the necessity of burying in pits, as has 
been done in New Orleans, and as was 
done during the great plague in London. 
May God preserve us from a necessity so 
revolting to the feelings of the friends of 
those that die ! 

I have mentioned the death of Rev. A. 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 73 

Dibbrell, Rev. J. Wills, and Rev. S. W. 
Jones. The other ministers of the Method- 
ist church, stationed here, are now both 
down with the fever, the latter thought to 
be dangerously ill. Rev. M. O'Keefe, the 
Catholic priest, is also sick. In my own 
family I have now another case. My eldest 
daughter, Mary, w x as attacked on "Wednes- 
day, but her case, thus far, seems to be 
a mild and manageable one, and I hope 
the crisis has been passed. She was just 
recovering from a slight attack of bilious 
fever ; and I had thought that this, or rather 
the cleansing of the system by the medicine 
she had taken, would have served as a 
protection against yellow fever. Instead 
of this, it seems to have laid the system 
more fully open to attack. 

I wrote you, in my last, that the tem- 
porary hospital, established at Oak Grove, 
had been abandoned, in order that we 
might avail ourselves of the better and 

more extensive accommodations furnished 

r 



74 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

by the buildings at Lambert's Point. Dur- 
ing the last few days, the number of the 
sick has increased so rapidly that it is found 
impossible to remove them to Lambert's 
Point; and the building known as the 
"City Hotel," in the very centre of the 
city, has been taken, and fitted up as an 
hospital, under the direction of the Howard 
Association. On Thursday (Aug. 29) the 
sick began to be carried thither. This new 
hospital, extensive as are its accommodations, 
is fast filling up ; and what other measures 
we may yet be compelled to adopt, God 
only knows. 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. <0 



LETTER V. 

a pastor's sabbath in a plague-stricken city. 

Sabbath, Sept. 2. 

This has been a terrible day in our city, 
and I have witnessed such scenes as, I pray 
God, I may never be called to see again. 
'Tis the fifth day after the cold storm 
mentioned in my letter of yesterday; the 
disease has had time to run its ordinary 
course, (for it is on the fifth or seventh 
day that death from the fever is most 
common,) and the great Reaper has begun 
to bind and carry home his sheaves to-day 
— literally his sheaves, — for it is not here 
and there one that has been taken, but the 
dead and the dying are in every quarter. 
All clay have I been going from one scene 
of affliction to another, and now, though 
tired in body, I cannot sleep; and, as some- 



76 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

times the overburdened spirit finds relief 
in such a way, I will employ this waking 
hour in writing to you. 

Never before had I an idea of what a 
pastor might be called to do and to wit- 
ness in a plague-stricken city. Let me 
take you with me, not to all the houses I 
have visited to-day; I will not take you 
out of my own congregation ; and even 
then I will ask you to go with me to such 
houses only as, within the last week, have 
been converted into hospitals. And, as we 
proceed, remember that mine is but one out 
of nine congregations, (including the Catho- 
lic,) and what you see here must be repeated 
nine times over, if you would have an 
idea of what is really taking place around 
you. 

"We will stop first here, near the main 
street. A widowed mother and two of 
her children, all victims of the fever, have 
been buried from this house within the 
last ten days, while the three remaining 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. <7 

children of that family, all apparently con- 
valescent, were on yesterday removed to the 
house of an uncle, in another part of the 
city. In the upper story, there is a maiden 
lady, with the three orphan children of a 
deceased sister, living — or rather, they were 
living yesterday, but all down with the fever, 
and the lady, Miss E. F. H., seemed then 
extremely ill. Can any thing be done for 
them to-day ? Let us enter and see. The 
children are all better, but the aunt is 
breathing her last; the physical agony of 
death has passed, and life is going out like 
the flickering candle in its socket. A sister 
has stolen away from her own sick son and 
daughter, that she may close her eyes ; and 
a nurse, sent by our kind neighbours of 
Charleston, is there also. All we can do 
here is to go and secure for her a coffin. 
She told me, when I called yesterday, that 
she had no expectation of recovery, but 
death had no terrors for her. 

Let us enter another door, not far from 



78 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

our church. Here, too, there are two fami- 
lies living in the same house, and all of both 
families have the fever. This is the house 
of which I have told you that, a few days 
ago, I stood at the door and begged a pass- 
ing physician to come in and prescribe for 
the sick, but begged in vain ; not that the 
physician was not willing to come, but be- 
cause he had already more cases in hand 
than he could properly attend to. I after- 
ward succeeded in getting a physician from 
Savannah, who had just arrived, to visit 
them : and since then he has been both doctor 
and nurse for all the sick in the house. The 
mother, in each family, has now so far re- 
covered as to be able to help the others a 
little. Provisions, sent from Baltimore, have 
been supplied them by the Howard Associa- 
tion. Can we do any thing for them ? All 
seem to be on the mend ; and what is most 
needed is some chicken-broth, for those who 
are beginning to feel like eating again. But 
how shall it be got for them? The soup- 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 79 

house of the Howard Association is on 
Market Square, and there is no one here 
that can go for them. An elder of our 
church took their pitcher and brought the 
soup to them yesterday, but he is by the 
bedside of a dying brother now. I must get 
it for them to-day. 

We will stop now at the house of Mr. J. 
A request was sent me this morning that I 
would call there if I could. There have been 
several cases of fever in this house for some 
days past, but all apparently yielding to 
medical treatment excepting that of Mrs. J., 
who is now said to be near her end. Hers 
has seemed to me a strange case from the first 
— little or no apparent fever, but an entire 
giving way of the nervous system. Those 
around her were at first disposed to think 
that she was suffering rather from ordinary 
nervousness than from yellow fever. She 
does not seem ill to-day, and yet her phy- 
sician, who has come from New Orleans, 
and made this disease his study, tells me she 



80 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

will be dead before to-morrow morning, 
Mrs. J. has been hard of hearing for several 
years, and this disease has made her per- 
fectly deaf. A warm-hearted Christian wo* 
man she is. She gives me a smile of re- 
cognition, and stretches out to me her qui- 
vering hand. She speaks; there is some- 
thing unearthly in the sound of her voice ; 
its tone is hollow and yet strangely sweet. 
She is evidently in her right mind, but she 
speaks of herself as the third person. " She 
expected from the time the fever appeared 
in Norfolk that she would die of it. She 
had wished to live a few years longer for 
her husband's and her children's sake, but 
God's will be done. Her prayer was that 
God would do with her and hers as seemed 
to him good." Can it be that she is so near 
her end? If so, this is a phase of the dis- 
ease that is new to me. Should she be 
taken, our church will lose in her a praying 
member. But why detain her ? she is ripe 
for heaven. 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 81 

The hour for morning service has arrived. 
Two of our churches are open to-day — one 
of the Episcopal churches, and my own. A 
mere handful have come up to the Lord's 
house ; and yet — blessed be God ! — enough 
to claim the Master's presence on his own 
terms: "Where two or three are gathered 
together in my name, there am I in the 
midst of them." The congregation all 
come forward and occupy some eight or nine 
pews immediately in front of the pulpit; 
and it seems fitting the occasion that the 
preacher should quit the pulpit and stand 
in their midst. Our sick and afflicted ones 
are remembered in our prayers ; our absent 
ones are not forgotten ; and it is cheering 
to think that many a fervent prayer is 
offered by them in our behalf; that, though 
absent from us in body, in spirit they are 
with us, and their prayer and ours is one — 
that God would say to this wasting pesti- 
lence, "It is enough." A congregation of 
twenty-seven persons (for this was the num- 



82 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

ber in our church to-day) in one of the three 
largest Presbyterian churches in Virginia ! 
And yet, in so far as I know, all our people 
were there who could be ; those not there 
are far away, or they are sick, or with the 
sick, or they are dead. A mere handful we 
were, but it was good to be there. Who, 
of this small number, shall come up to 
God's house on next Sabbath morning, if 
there be a congregation gathered here, I 
cannot tell. It may be all — it may be none 
of us. But then there is a more glorious 
sanctuary, and a holier, sweeter sanctuary 
worship than this, to which, through God's 
grace, we may look forward when we have 
done with the Sabbaths of earth. 

Having rested for a little season now, let 
us visit the house of Mr. S. "When last 
there, on Friday evening, there were five of 
the children down with the fever, and, 
although two of them were very sick, they 
did not appear to be in any immediate 
danger, and the mother and three other 



THE BUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 83 

children were there to nurse them. We 
enter. The mother and another child were 
taken down yesterday, and the mother's 
case seems to be rather a threatening one. 
But "God is with her of a truth," blessed 
be his name ! The eldest daughter has had 
the "black vomit" for several hours. Can 
it be that she is to die ? She says that she 
does not suffer, and her mind seems clear 
and her spirit composed. She has been a 
member of the church for several years; 
and her regular attendance in the sanctuary, 
and in the prayer-meeting, and in the Sab- 
bath-school, has borne witness that her heart 
w r as in the service which she rendered God, 
She is in the hands of her Heavenly Father, 
and there must we leave her; and to no 
better hands can we commit those we love. 
The other sick ones all appear to be doing 
well. Here let us kneel, midway between 
the three rooms in which the sick are lying, 
that all may hear and join in the prayer. 
How solemn a thing it is to pray in such 



84 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

circumstances ! "Whether we shall all unite 
in prayer again on earth God only knows. 

Passing around the corner of the street, 
here, in this house just before us, there 
were five sick with the fever yesterday. 
There were well ones there then, to nurse 
the sick, but nearly worn out by the ex- 
ertions they had been compelled to make. 
A lady from Washington, who has kindly 
come on as a nurse, is with them to-day. 
The sick ones are not arranged as they 
were yesterday. Why is this ? Those most 
ill have been placed in a room by them- 
selves ; that, if they die, (and there is reason 
to fear that one at least will,) their death- 
struggles may not excite and thus do harm 
to those who seem to be recovering. There 
is great mercy in thus " sorting out" the 
sick at such a time as this. There is rea- 
son to fear that one of these two placed 
here together will die. Ida, the elder, 
seemed to be doing well yesterday ; but last 
night she suddenly started up from her 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 85 

troubled sleep, and, before any one could 
get to lier, sprang from the bed, and ran 
screaming down the stairs and to the front 
door. Here she was overtaken, and brought 
back to bed again ; but the shock her ner- 
vous system received is likely to prove fatal. 
The account she gives of the matter is that 
in her sleep she dreamed that some fright- 
ful monster was just about to seize her, when 
she sprang from her bed and ran. In a 
disease which affects the nervous system 
as the yellow fever does, such cases as this 
are to be expected, and, on account of their 
fatal consequences, need to be very carefully 
guarded against. "With the exception of 
Ida, the sick here seem to be in no imme- 
diate danger. 

Going along this street to the head of it, 
let us visit Mr. B's. Two of the children 
had the fever yesterday, and when I saw 
them I had but little hope that either of 
them would recover. "We enter the house ; 
— no one thinks of bell or knocker now. 

8 



Ob THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

A tierce watch-dog lies across the passage, 
and yet, strange to say, there seems to be a 
spell upon him, and he meets us as a friend. 
Hark ! that was a fearful scream ! The spell 
on the watch-dog's spirit is explained; for 
dogs seem to understand by instinct such 
sounds as this. We ascend the stairs. Here, 
in this room, lies Eugene, just breathing his 
last. In his agony he has ruptured a blood- 
vessel ; and now his pale white arm is in 
strong contrast with the blood-stained pil- 
low on which it lies. Yesterday he was in his 
senses, and I had a very pleasant talk with 
him about Jesus and his love for children. 
He told me then that he thought he loved 
Jesus, and I trust he did. He is perfectly 
insensible and cold at the extremities now. 
The scream we heard was from his sister, 
in the next room — a raving maniac in the 
paroxysm of her fever. Her heart-stricken 
mother can hardly hold her. It is a little 
more than a year since Florence took her 
stand among the disciples of Jesus; and 



THE SUMMER OF TIIE PESTILENCE. 87 

she promised to make a useful member of 
the church. Should she be taken — and I 
think she will be dead before morning — she 
will be the third of those then gathered in 
that have now been gathered home. A 
nurse is with the mother. But where is the 
father? Down with the fever, in another 
part of the house, and with the disease 
showing the same terrible symptoms it has 
in the case of his children. What can we 
do for this household? I know not, but to 
assist in having Mr. B. removed to the 
hospital, and to secure a coffin for Eugene. 
Florence will probably not need hers before 
morning. 

The sun is just setting ; and this is the 
hour I promised to attend the funeral — if fu- 
neral our burial-service now may be called — 
of Miss Helen AV. The case of this family 
is sad indeed. Captain S., Miss Helen's 
brother-in-law, returned from a three years' 
naval cruise but a few weeks ago. The 
family consisted of Captain and Mrs. S., 



88 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE, 

Miss Helen, four children at home, and one 
away, at sea. About ten days ago Cap- 
tain S. died ; a few days later, his wife ; 
then the eldest daughter, and now Miss 
Helen; and the two younger children are 
lying extremely ill. When I called last 
evening to see Miss Helen, she did not 
seem to be suffering in body at all; and 
knowing that she had been subject, for 
years, to occasional seasons of great de- 
pression of spirits, I thought that it was 
possibly as much depression of spirits as 
yellow fever she was suffering from then; 
and, seeing the condition of the children, I 
urged her to arouse herself, for their sakes. 
She told me then that she would get up in 
the morning. When morning came, she was 
a corpse ; and now we are here for her 
burial. Mr. and Mrs. G., relatives of the 
family, are here to do what they can for 
them; and they, ¥m. S., two men who 
have come with the hearse, and ourselves, 
are the congregation assembled for the fu- 



TIIE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 89 

neral. No carriage accompanies the hearse, 
for none can be obtained ; and we must do 
as we can and not as w T e would now. The 
1 coffin is brought down. ~We stop with it a 
few moments in the hall, while a brief 
prayer is offered; and then, placing it in 
the hearse, it is driven off to the cemetery 
at a rapid pace. ¥m. S., that he may see 
his aunt's body laid with those of the fa- 
mily, mounts the hearse-box with the 
driver, and they are soon lost to view. 
Such are many of our funerals in this time 
of pestilence. Four out of seven have now 
been buried from this household : and two 
more, I fear, must shortly be added to the 
number of the dead. May we not call this 
a family removal from this, their last year's 
residence, to the cemetery ? 

One other call we must make, before re- 
turning home for the night. In the house 
we are entering, the husband, Mr. H., was 
extremely ill this morning ; and there was 
little or no hope of his recovery. The chil- 



90 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

dren, through God's good providence, were 
all away when the fever began to spread in 
the city, and have not been suffered to re- 
turn. There are now four of the family 
here — Mr. H., a niece who has had a slight 
attack of fever and is recovering, Mrs. H., 
who was so ill ten days ago that I little 
thought she would now be numbered 
among the living, (she is better, and, 
although feeble, she sits watching by the 
bedside of her dying husband,) and her 
father, an old man. He seems overcome 
by the threatening calamity. Mr. H. yet 
breathes, but the death-damp is gathering 
on his forehead, and he must soon be gone. 
"Can you get some one to help us lay him out?" 
And is this all that can be done for them ? 
It is even so. No question I have heard 
to-day has struck so sadly upon my ear, 
heard where it is, as this ; for to me it tells 
of the terrible "destruction" now wasting 
us. I do not believe that a family could be 
found in the city who have more uniformly 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 91 

and constantly "visited the sick in their 
afflictions" than this; and at any other 
time many a one would have been present, 
brought hither by the grateful remem- 
brance of kindness done, to render every 
aid which man can render to the sick and 
dying. But now, so terribly does the pes- 
tilence prevail that even in this house the 
question is heard at the bedside of the 
dying — " Can you get some one to help us 
lay him out?" — "All our pleasant things are 
laid waste. Wilt thou refrain thyself for 
these things, Lord?" 



92 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 



LETTER VI. 

THE CRISIS OF THE EPIDEMIC — FRIGHTFUL MORTALITY- 
BURYING IN PITS A BURIAL IN A PLAGUE-STRICKEN 

CITY APPEARANCE OF THE CEMETERY APPEARANCE OF 

THE HARBOUR — CASES OF ROBBERY — CHARACTER OP 
NURSES FROM ABROAD. 

Thursday, Sept. 6. 

The fever continues to rage with un- 
abated violence. The exact number of 
deaths, daily, I cannot tell ; but it will not 
take many weeks of such pestilence as 
this to leave our city without inhabitants. 
On carefully looking over our church roll, 
on the first of this month, I found that we 
had just eighty-seven of our communicants 
then in the city. Out of this number, ten 
died during the first three days of this 
week. I have heard and read of cities de- 
cimated during a season of pestilence ; but 
here is more than a decimation in three 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 93 

days. Through God's good providence, 
two-thirds of our church members are 
away, beyond the range of the fever which 
is wasting us. It may be that this is God's 
plan for preserving us " a seed alive in the 
earth." 

"Walking with a friend yesterday, he re- 
marked, "The verse of an old hymn has 
been constantly running in my mind for 
the last day or two : — 

" ' One army of the living God, 
To his commands we bow ; 
Part of the host have crossed the flood. 
And part are crossing now. 1 " 

Certainly no words could more accurately 
describe our case then these. Had I not 
God's own assurance that the church was 
ever his care, and did I not know that his 
church on earth was established, in the 
first instance, simply as a training-school 
for the church above, I should be ready 
to say, with Jacob, "All these things are 
against me." 

I have just returned from the burial of a 



94 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

young man, a member of my church, whose 
death was an exceedingly painful one, in so 
far as the body was concerned. When first 
taken, he seemed to be slightly attacked, 
and in the course of five or six days was up 
and walking about his room. In this con- 
dition he ate imprudently, and thus brought 
on a relapse. After the fever returned upon 
him, it was found impossible to break it 
again; and yesterday the blood actually 
oozed through the skin, on different parts 
of his body, before he died. As a general 
thing, death by yellow fever seems to be 
rather an easy one ; but occasionally cases 
occur, like this, where the death-struggle is 
terrible. 

I said above that I could not tell the 
exact number of deaths now occurring 
daily. It is commonly reported at about 
eighty ; but this I know must be below the 
real number. On yesterday, between four 
and five o'clock, p. m., I accompanied a 
corpse to the cemetery, and seeing a large 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 95 

number of coffins lying in different parts 
of the ground, awaiting interment, I asked 
the principal grave-digger the number of 
graves then ordered in the city cemeteries 
for the day. He replied, u Forty-three." 
Passing on to the Potters' Field, I saw two 
piles of coffins and rough boxes, such as we 
are compelled to substitute for coffins in 
many instances now, piled up like cord- 
wood, as high as a man could conveniently 
reach to pile them ; w T hile close by, men were 
busy in digging a pit in which to cover them 
up from sight. I did not count them, but 
the person having charge of the matter 
said there were upward of forty in all. 
Now, besides these, several coloured persons 
had been buried that day; one under my 
own eyes, where friends went along and dug 
the grave after the corpse was carried to the 
ground. We have, then, for that day, in 
the city cemeteries and in the Potters' Field, 
not less than ninety burials ; and this does 
not include the interments in the Catholic 



96 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

burial-ground, which is distinct from the 
city cemeteries; and I do not know the 
number buried there. And this before five 
o'clock in the afternoon ; while for a week 
past they have continued to carry out and 
bury the dead until nine or ten o'clock at 
night. On such ground as this it is I say 
the number of deaths must be much greater 
than the published estimate. 

Burying the dead in pits, if burial it 
can be called, and in many an instance with 
nothing but a rough box to surround the 
body — to this has stern necessity driven us. 
And even this is not the worst ; the boxes 
used have generally but one body placed in 
them, and yet this is not always the case ; 
in one instance I know that four bodies 
were crowded into a single box; and one 
of the most active members of the Howard 
Association told me, that, a few nights ago, 
the supply of coffins and boxes having given 
out, he helped to bury eight corpses just 
tied up in the blankets in which the persons 



THE SUMMER OF TIIE PESTILENCE. 97 

had died. Thus are the dead carried out 
to the Potters' Field, sometimes in furni- 
ture-wagons, sometimes in carts, some- 
times upon drays ; and there, placed layer 
upon layer in the pits, they rest, until the 
morning of the resurrection. You know 
our people too well to think that this arises 
from any want of a disposition to show a 
proper respect for the dead, or from any 
lack of those feelings of our common hu- 
manity which are shocked at such a course. 
It is a stern necessity which compels us to 
do as we are doing ; for thus only can we 
keep the tainted air from becoming so 
deeply infected that none shall be left to 
bury our dead ; thus only can we keep pace 
with death in his rapid strides. The " great 
Keaper," — surely this is his harvest season; 
and the living toil and sweat in binding 
and carrying home the sheaves after his 
sickle. 

We have burials, but no funerals, now. 
And that you may know just how our 



98 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

burials are performed, let me take you with 
me to one to-day. By the exertion of friends 
two carriages have been secured to accom- 
pany the hearse. We enter one of them, 
and are driven off rapidly toward the house 
where the corpse is lying. We stop a short 
distance from the door. It is the mother 
we are to bury; and the daughter is now 
so extremely ill that they dare not let her 
know that her mother lies dead in the very 
next room to herself; and this is the reason 
why the hearse and carriages are not suf- 
fered to come up to the door. Enough are 
present to carry the coffin to the hearse; 
and now that it has been placed there, we 
drive off, hearse and carriages, at the same 
rapid pace at which we were driven hither. 
The principal grave-digger opens the ceme- 
tery gate ; but instead of silently pointing 
us to the grave, as in ordinary times, or 
inquiring in a whisper the name of the 
deceased, and then, in the same tone, giv- 
ing us our directions, aa he did ten day a 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 99 

ago, he now asks, in very much the style of 
the challenge given by a sentry on guard, 
" Who's this ?" and when the answer is given, 
we are told which way to direct our course. 
Arrived at the lot belonging to the family, 
we find no grave dug there as yet; so many 
graves have been ordered to-day, that, with 
all the help that can be hired to labour at 
grave-digging, it is impossible the orders 
should be promptly attended to. The hearse 
cannot wait ; the carriages cannot wait ; all 
we can do is to deposit the coffin where 
the grave is to be dug, and, offering a short 
prayer, there leave it, to take its turn at 
the hands of the over-tasked grave-diggers. 
Before we quit the cemetery, stand here 
and look around you. This is September, 
< — the season of the year when in ordinary 
times every thing looks green in this place, 
and under the shade of these old cedars a 
quiet reigns which well becomes a cemetery 
— a resting-place for the dead. But now 
there are labourers toiling in every part of 



100 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

the ground, and the sound of the shovel 
of the grave-digger is heard on every side, 
even while our little company stood for 
a few moments uncovered for prayer. 
"God's-acre" has the appearance of a 
ploughed field. Instead of a resting-place 
for the dead, the cemetery looks more like 
a camping-ground being got ready for a 
coming host of the living. The city and 
the cemetery have exchanged characters. 
The latter now wears the busy aspect which 
belongs of right to the former; and almost 
the silence of death reigns in the deserted 
streets. 

Returning from the cemetery, let us take 
our way to the drawbridge, that from thence 
we may have a full view of the harbour, 
and of what, a few weeks ago, was the 
business part of the city. As we pass 
along, notice these flies collected about the 
doors and windows of almost every house 
we pass. This is said to be the plague-fly, 
and its coming is thought to mark the crisis 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 101 

of the epidemic. I first noticed it about a 
week ago ; and since then the pestilence 
might well be called "the destruction which 
wasteth at noonday." Here, in this house 
on our left, we made our last visit together, 
on Sabbath night. Mr. H. died shortly 
after we left the house. His father-in-law 
followed his corpse to the cemetery on Mon- 
day evening, and, returning home with a 
chill upon him, died and was buried on yes- 
terday. So rapidly does this fever, in some 
instances, do its work. God help the heart- 
stricken one from whom He has, almost at 
one and the same time, taken both father 
and husband ! 

Xow that we are out upon the draw- 
bridge, look along the water-front of the 
city. AVharves and warehouses, with the 
names of occupants painted in large letters 
upon their fronts, all appear as usual, sav- 
ing that their doors and windows are closed, 
and there is no living thing to be seen 
about them. The names painted there 



102 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

will, many of them, if they are to give true 
directions, soon have to be blotted out, 
and graven, instead, upon the sign-stones in 
the " city of the dead." But look along 
the wharves, where at every season of the 
year there are many vessels lying, and in 
the winter and early spring they often line 
the wharf-heads five and six deep. There 
is not now one single vessel to be seen 
afloat, from the drawbridge to Town-Point. 
There are the two slender masts of a 
fishing-smack sunken in the county dock; 
and here, in this shipyard, there is a ves- 
sel drawn up as if for repairs; but there 
is no shipwright at work upon her. There 
is a plank half fastened to her side ; but 
the hand that placed it there "shall not 
have any more a portion forever in any 
thing that is done under the sun." The 
onty boat which enters our harbour now is 
the little steamer, J. E. Coffee, run to meet 
the boats from Baltimore and Richmond in 
Hampton Boads. By her our mails are 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 103 

carried and all our commerce done. Yes- 
terday she came in with her whole deck 
piled with empty coffins ; and coffins for the 
dead are one main article of import now, 
more needed, more sought after, than any 
other article offered in our market. I have 
seen furniture- wagons drive rapidly hither 
and thither through the city, of late, 
and the only article of furniture they have 
carried home has been coffins. I looked 
over the day-book of one of our principal 
furniture-dealers, yesterday; and, all down 
the page, there was no charge but the oft- 
repeated one of "A coffin;'' — "a coffin." 
Poor, desolate Norfolk! The coming of a 
ship into her harbour to-day would cause 
almost as much surprise to the beholder as 
did the coming of the ship whose hull first 
rippled the surface of her waters to the 
Indian who then dwelt here. The sun 
shines as brightly, and the sea-breeze seems 
as balmy, as at other times ; and yet this, 
one of the finest harbours on the Atlantic 



104 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

seaboard, — the unseen pestilence has made 
it to be shunned by the mariner, more 
than if it were fall of quicksands and 
sunken rocks. 

And now, having witnessed something 
of the desolation which has settled down on 
our plague-stricken city, let me tell you of 
troubles of another kind, which have, very 
unexpectedly to me, come upon us. A man 
by the name of Isaac Marks came here 
a short time ago as a nurse, and so won 
the confidence of those in authority that 
the City Hospital was put under his super- 
vision. This man has been detected in 
robbing the dying, has confessed his crime, 
and has pointed out the place where he con- 
cealed his plunder. One would think that 
persons coming to such a city as ours now 
is would be possessed of pure and holy 
motives ; or, at the least, that the sight of 
our sorrows would move the heart of the 
most hardened villain to pity, and, even 
though he might have come with intent to 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 105 

curse, cause him to stay that he might bless 
us. It is not so. "The love of money is 
the root of all evil;" and there are men 
from whose hearts it has blotted out every 
trace of a better humanity. 

The way in which this robbery committed 
by Marks has been found out is worthy of 
record. He was acting as nurse in a family 
living next door to the hospital, and where 
the pestilence has swept away father and 
mother, and child after child, until, out of a 
family of eleven, only three, I believe, re- 
main. These were all sick, and the elder, 
a boy about fourteen years old, was thought 
to be dying. When taken sick, this boy 
had placed under his pillow the key of a 
trunk containing jewelry and other articles 
of value given him by his father before his 
death. Marks knew where this key was; 
and, supposing the boy to be too far gone to 
take notice of what he did, possessed him- 
self of the key, and thus of the valuables 
contained in the trunk. Contrary to all ex- 



106 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

pectation, this boy is now recovering, and 
has given the information which led to 
the detection of the robbeiy. 

It is painful to know that such cases as 
this can occur, and to feel that while watch- 
ing with the sick you have to guard against 
the robber ; and yet this is not the only in- 
stance of the kind which has occurred among 
us. A few days ago, I was accosted in the 
street by a stranger, so drunk that he could 
hardly stand, who told me that he had let- 
ters of introduction to me from a friend 
in Richmond, and asked me to get him a 
place as a nurse in some family needing 
such services. He did not show me any 
letters, nor do I believe that he had any; 
for, great as is the want of integrity mani- 
fested by thoughtless men in giving letters 
of recommendation, I do not believe that 
any one would recommend a drunkard as 
a nurse in yellow fever. Knowing how 
useless it was to reason with or to attempt 
to reprove a drunken man, I turned from 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 107 

him, simply warning him to quit the city 
as soon as he could find the means of get- 
ting away. I learned the next day that 
this man had come here, and, by his plau- 
sible representations, had succeeded in get- 
ting a place as nurse in a family where all 
were down with the fever ; and there, hav- 
ing robbed the young man whose special 
nurse he was, had then made himself drunk 
with the brandy ordered by the physician 
for his patient, and in this condition had 
left the house and come to me. 

You may ask, where is our city govern- 
ment, when such occurrences as these can 
be suffered to take place, and yet the cri- 
minal escape the punishment he deserves? 
I wrote you, some time ago, that Woodis, 
our mayor, was dead. I have now to add 
that Dr. Whitehead, our acting mayor, is 
down with the fever. His case does not 
seem, to-day, a very threatening one ; and 
yet God only knows how it will terminate. 
And so with almost every one of our city 



108 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

officers that remained with us. They are 
now numbered either with the sick or the 
dead; and those of our citizens who have 
thus far escaped have no heart to punish 
even the criminal. 

Do not infer, however, from the cases just 
mentioned, the general character of those 
who have come among us from abroad to 
act as nurses. Those sent us by the 'How- 
ard Associations in our southern cities (and 
I find them now in very many houses) are 
careful and attentive, and seem to have 
"been selected with great judgment by those 
w T ho sent them. So, too, with the Sisters 
of Charity, several of whom have come 
hither from abroad and are now with us. 
And among the volunteer nurses acting 
under the direction of our Howard Asso- 
ciation there are many worthy of all praise. 
And their coming was a blessing indeed to 
us ; and many a life has been saved through 
their unwearied exertions. 



THE SUMMER OF TIIE PESTILENCE. 109 



LETTER VH. 

THE PESTILENCE ABATING — DEATH OF MISS ELIZA SOUTTER 

SCENE AT THE POST-OFFICE PROPOSAL TO REMOVE THE 

PEOPLE TO OLD POINT. 

Wednesday, Sept. 12. 

The pestilence is evidently abating in 
violence, the number of deaths daily be- 
ing now not much more than half what it 
was ten days ago. And yet I feel sad to- 
day; more sad, I believe, than I have felt 
any day since the pestilence first appeared. 
This may be in part owing to physcal causes ; 
for neuralgic pains in my face have broken 
my rest for several nights past, and this and 
depression of spirits often go hand-in-hand 
in this world of ours, the willing spirit 
suffering under the weakness of the flesh. 

This sadness is not, however, owing alto- 
gether to the body. I have had to-day one 
10 



110 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

of tlie most painful acts in my pastoral 
life to perform; and that was to follow to 
the grave the remains of our dear friend, 
Eliza Soutter. It ought not to have been a 
saddening act to me, I know; and, had I 
but the faith to look above and beyond these 
present scenes, and to trust unquestioningly 
the interests of Zion in the hands of Zion's 
God, it would not so appear. At the grave 
of one in whose death we have no hope, 
tears well may flow, but not at that of 
one who "sleeps in Jesus." I recollect 
once to have read of an old Scotch mi- 
nister — in those times of persecution when 
God's people, " of whom the world was not 
worthy," were hunted like wild beasts — who 
used to pray, "Lord, spare the green and 
take the ripe." Oh that I had faith thus 
to pray! but the ripest for heaven seem, 
to mortal sense, the very ones we can 
most illy spare from the Church on earth. 
I do not know that I have ever met 
with a Christian whose character ex- 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. Ill 

hibited more of symmetry, — a character in 
which the lovelier graces were more duly 
attempered with Christian frankness and 
integrity, — than the one I have followed to 
the grave to-day. For the last two weeks 
I have been called so regularly, every day, 
to buiy some one or more of the members 
of my church, that I now find myself, on 
awaking in the morning, asking myself the 
question — Whom have I to bury to-day? 
And, from closely noticing the symptoms of 
this fever, I can generally answer the ques- 
tion, at least in part, without a prompter. 
When I saw our dear friend on yesterday, 
I knew that she was in a dying state ; and 
the first thought that occurred this morning 
was, " I must help to bury her to-day." And 
yet, when the announcement came that she 
was dead, it seemed to me I could hardly 
believe it — so much, and often insensibly 
too, do our wishes control and overbear the 
decisions of the judgment. She is in the 
grave now; no: she is not in the grave, — the 



112 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

body alone is there ; the spirit, the ran- 
somed spirit, I doubt not, "hath imme- 
diately passed into glory." In her last 
hours, and ere reason was dethroned, Christ, 
and the glorious fulness and perfection of 
his gospel, seemed to engage her thoughts. 
Well, no longer does she see Him whom 
she hath loved "through a glass, darkly — 
but face to face." I heard the remark 
quoted, some weeks ago, as that of an 
eminent physician, "Beware the Parthian 
arrows of the pestilence!" It made but 
little impression when first I heard it; I 
shall long remember it now. The Par- 
thian arrows of the pestilence are striking 
down some of the noblest and loveliest 
among us. 

I was at the post-office to-day shortly 
after the mail arrived, and the scene which 
met my eye, as contrasted with what it was 
a month ago, was truly affecting. "When 
the post-office was first removed from Com- 
merce Street to the Academy Building, 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 113 

it used to be a place of general meeting for 
our people ; and at the time the mails were 
due, a crowd would collect in the ample 
porch and on the steps of the building, 
while in the yard, and especially in the 
shade, there were always boys playing 
marbles, or engaged in some other sport, 
and this with all the characteristic thought- 
lessness and hilarity of youth. Here we 
met, and inquiries were made and an- 
swered respecting friends and acquaint- 
ances in different parts of the city; and 
companionship in trial made us sociable, so 
that those who before had known each other 
by sight only now met almost as old friends. 
Thus, even after a general gloom had spread 
itself over every other part of the city, here 
was a spot which yet wore a busy, cheerful 
aspect. All is changed now. To-day I 
saw no boys playing around, no crowd 
collected in the porch; but, one by one, 
men with sad countenances came, and, 
receiving their letters and papers, turned 

10* 



114 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

and went away again, one hardly having 
the heart to speak to another. "While con- 
nected with the college in Lexington, I used 
at one time regularly to take my morning 
walk through a small piece of wood not far 
from the college buildings. One season a 
covey of partridges selected this wood as 
their feeding-ground. Here my approach 
would often start them up, and with a great 
fluttering of wing they would scatter in 
every direction. But the hunter found 
them out, and every day one or more of 
them would fall before his deadly aim, until 
the whole flock disappeared. In the early 
winter I would occasionally startle a single 
partridge from the old feeding-ground — one, 
I suppose, left alone of all that used to con- 
gregate there. I know not how often the 
thought has occurred to my mind, in the 
last few days, that such as was the history 
of this hunted flock, such will be that of 
the crowd that, a month ago, used to collect 
at our post-office. 



TIIE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 115 

I wrote you in my last that Dr. White- 
head, our acting mayor, was down with the 
fever. He is now so far recovered as to be 
sitting up again ; but a sore affliction has 
befallen him, in the death of his only daugh- 
ter, and, indeed, his only child, that remained 
at home unmarried. A member of my 
church she was, and, although many years 
younger than Eliza Soutter, she gave pro- 
mise of much of the same excellence of 
Christian character w T hich has made her 
death so great a loss to us. "Passing 
away" seems to have been written by the 
finger of God, as a motto, upon the standard 
around which the Captain of our salvation 
has marshalled our little band. 

I learn from the papers, and from private 
letters too, that our friends at a distance 
are talking of the propriety of the removal 
of our people in a body to Old Point, or to 
some other place beyond the reach of the 
deadly epidemic prevailing here. Perhaps 
6ome lives might be saved by such a course; 



116 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

but the thing is in itself impossible. Not 
that we are so numerous now that the 
means of transportation could not be found ; 
it would not take many boats to remove us 
all to Old Point in a day or two. But there 
are the sick and the dying in almost every 
family, and these in a condition which 
places their removal out of the question ; 
and those yet well cannot leave the sick. 
Our case is like that of the detachment of a 
retreating army to whose care the wounded 
have been confided. The enemy is closely 
pressing upon them, and word is sent them 
from those at a distance, who see naught 
but the danger in which this detachment is, 
"Flee— flee for your lives !" "But what of 
our wounded companions, who cannot flee ? 
we are moving as rapidly as we can, and 
carry them with us." And word comes yet 
again — " Flee ! leave the wounded, if you 
must ; there will be less sacrifice of life if 
they are all left to die, and you save your- 
selves by flight, than if you stay at the risk 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 117 

of perishing with them, while the enemy is 
pressing so closely upon you." "This may 
all be true; but the wounded are our breth- 
ren, — those who have fought side by side 
with us in many a battle, — those who would 
never have deserted us had we been the 
wounded and they the whole. Flee we can- 
not. We can die with them, if God's will 
be so, but never leave them. 



118 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 



LETTER Vm. 

PERSONAL EXPERIENCE OF THE FEVER — UNFULFILLED 
PRESENTIMENT OF DEATH — PROPOSED DEPARTURE FROM 
NORFOLK. 

Wednesday, Sept. 19, 1855. 

Just a week has elapsed since last I wrote 
you, and yet it seems to me an age. That 
I should have the fever, and possibly, per- 
haps I ought to say probably, die under its 
attack, has for weeks past entered into all 
my calculations, when I have thought upon 
the subject at all; and yet, I can truly say, 
this prospect has caused me no anxious 
thought. When will we Christians learn to 
exercise faith commensurate with the ful- 
ness of God's precious promise — "as thy 
day so shall thy strength be"? for it is to 
his sustaining grace alone I can attribute 
the quiet I have enjoyed. 

The very night after my last letter was 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 119 

written, the fever did attack me; and to- 
day, for the first time, I am sitting up for a 
little while, although I find myself weak as 
a child. In several of my letters I have 
had occasion to speak of the character and 
symptoms of this disease as they present 
themselves to a bystander ; I can now speak 
of them as they present themselves in one's 
personal experience ; or, if I may be allowed 
the use of the figure, I have attempted to 
exhibit to you the mode of attack and to 
expose the wiles of the enemy as they 
might be learned by a looker-on. I can now 
speak of them as learned in a personal en- 
counter. 

The fever prevailing here has seemed to 
change its type, at least in so far as its most 
obvious symptoms are concerned, and this 
more than once since its appearance among 
us. In almost all the cases I saw several 
weeks ago, an intense burning sensation in 
the pit of the stomach, aggravated by almost 
every thing which the patient would swal- 



120 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

low, especially the stimulants which were 
given as the fever passed oft', was the 
symptom chiefly complained of by the suf- 
ferer. I recollect the Eev. A. Dibbrell's re- 
marking to me, the last time I saw him 
before his death, that he never had felt the 
force of the Scriptural expression, "the worm 
that dieth not, and the fire that is not 
quenched/' so much as while suffering from 
this fever. Of late I have heard very few 
complain much of this burning sensation; 
and in my own case, although I suffered to 
some extent in this way — enough to lead me 
to think that the stomach was in an exceed- 
ingly irritated condition, yet not to such an 
extent as to make it, in the retrospect, a 
marked characteristic of the disease. 

Very much the same remarks might be 
made respecting the intense pain in the 
head and the back of which almost every 
one complained, when first attacked, in the 
earlier stages of the epidemic. Some pain 
in the head and back I did suffer at first, 



TIIE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 121 

but these were speedily relieved by the ap- 
plication of a plaster, made of equal parts 
of cayeune pepper and flour, to the spine. 

A few weeks ago almost every case com- 
menced with a distinct, and sometimes pro- 
tracted, chill. Of late, in many an instance, 
the person attacked is conscious of no dis- 
tinct chill. In my own case, it would be 
difficult to say just when the attack com- 
menced. When writing my last letter to 
you, I was conscious of an unusual ner- 
vous irritability, and walked the floor of 
my room for several hours after finishing 
it, suffering from what I thought neuralgic 
pains in my face. Such pains had broken 
my rest almost every night for the week 
then past; and when, after a few hours 
of unrefreshing slumber. I awoke, the next 
morning, with a dull pain in the head 
and a slightly feverish condition of the 
whole body, I was disposed to attribute this 
to my loss of rest, and after breakfast went 

out, as usual, to visit the sick and to take 
11 



122 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

part in burying the dead. After following 
a corpse to the cemetery at ten o'clock, I 
found myself so much indisposed that I re- 
turned home, and in the course of an hour 
went to bed. Even then I was hardly will- 
ing to admit to myself that this was the 
beginning of the fever; yet such it soon 
proved to be. 

The main characteristic of the fever, as 
it now presents itself to me, is a terrible 
nervous restlessness, which increased as 
the disease progressed toward its crisis, 
and of which I am yet by no means free. 
You may think that I am using a very 
strong expression when I call this a terrible 
nervous restlessness; yet no other words 
will convey just the impression which it 
has left upon my memory. My feelings 
during the whole of Saturday night, when 
this affection was at its height, I do not 
know that I can describe ; or rather, I ought 
to say, I know that I cannot describe in 
language. I can perhaps give you the best 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 123 

idea of it by simply noting the fact that 
during that long, long night, as it seemed 
to me, the following changes were gone 
through with about every ten minutes. 
First, awaking with a nervous irritability, 
such that it was only with the utmost 
effort I could lie still, or keep the bed- 
clothes upon me. I well knew, and the 
thought was constantly before my mind, 
that my life depended, in so far as second 
causes were concerned, upon keeping quiet 
and covered up, so that the gentle perspira- 
tion in which I was should not be checked ; 
and yet, as this restlessness increased, it 
seemed to me that I had rather die than 
lie still ; and this, although I would reason 
with myself as a Christian, and a hus- 
band and father with a family dependent 
upon him. Then, this restlessness, increas- 
ing, would become absolutely irresistible in 
the course of five or six minutes; (I had 
caused a lamp to be placed so as to throw 
its light upon a clock on the mantel, that 



124 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

I might mark the passage of time, and I 
therefore say, "five or six minutes," 
although the time often seemed to me a 
full hour;) when, taking a small piece of 
ice in my mouth, I would yield for the 
moment to my restlessness, and. throwing 
myself over in the bed, drop to sleep for 
a minute or two, to awake and go through 
precisely the same changes during the next 
ten minutes. 

Several weeks ago, I sat by the bedside 
of a young man, in the crisis of his fever, 
who would throw the bedclothes off him 
every few minutes. I tried to persuade 
him to control himself in this particular; 
when he asked me, in a tone and with a 
look which showed that the question was 
asked in all seriousness, "What think you 
will be the consequence if I do not keep 
covered up?" As his case was then a very 
critical one, I replied, "Unless you can be 
kept covered you will certainly die." " "Well, 
die I must, then," said he, and with a single 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 125 

effort threw all the clothes off him again. 
I did not understand his feelings then. I 
do now. On account of this nervous rest- 
lessness it is, in part at least, that the 
constant attention of a careful nurse is so 
important. 

This restlessness has been to me one of 
the most marked characteristics of the fever 
in most of the fatal cases which I have seen, — 
a nervous irritability which even the stu- 
por preceding death does not overcome; 
for I have seen the dying man throwing his 
head from side to side upon the pillow, even 
after all the organs of sense had ceased 
their office. I will not attempt to discuss 
the nature of yellow fever — that I leave to 
the physician; but, taking this nervous irri- 
tability as an index of the progress of the 
disease, (and this it certainly seemed to me 
to be, in very many instances,) I would sim- 
ply record the fact that any thing which 
increased the irritation of the stomach or 

checked the perspiration seemed always to 
11* 



126 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

increase it. And hence I would infer — 
first, that as gentle medicines as possible 
should be used to act upon the stomach 
and bowels; in my case, a dose of castor 
oil, followed in the course of two hours 
by enemas of oil and warm water, were 
the only medicines used to act on the 
stomach. And, second, that moderate per- 
spiration (not excessive, lest it weaken the 
patient too much in this wonderfully pros- 
trating disease) should be produced as soon 
after the commencement of the attack as 
possible, and thenceforward kept up by 
external applications, (mustard and steam- 
baths are the means upon which our phy- 
sicians rely,) or by some pleasant sudorific, 
such as balm or orange-leaf tea. Some such 
practice as this is that which has proved 
most successful here. Of course, there are 
cases in which the disease presents some 
peculiar symptoms, or assumes an un- 
usual type, where other remedies, even vio- 
lent ones, have to be resorted to ; but this 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 127 

is true, in so far as I have seen, — whether it 
is to be attributed to the fact that the cases 
in which more violent remedies were re- 
sorted to were of a more malignant type 
or not, — that in very few of these cases has 
the patient recovered. 

It is also true, and ought to be stated 
in connection with what I have written 
above, that the fever prevailing among us, if 
it be one and the same disease in all cases, 
(and there are many good reasons why it 
should be so regarded,) is a disease Pro- 
tean in its forms, as there have been, from 
the first, cases occurring which seemed to 
resist all kinds of medical treatment, — cases 
in which, even though the medicine ad- 
ministered produced the immediate effect 
designed, the disease has moved right on- 
ward to a fatal termination. Some ten days 
ago, one of our first physicians said to me, 
"I have never felt so powerless in the pre- 
sence of any disease as in the presence of 
this. In some of its forms it laughs the 



128 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

skill of the physician to scorn." And such, 
I believe, is the feeling of all the more 
intelligent physicians among us. One ex- 
ception there was, at least, a Yew weeks ago* 
I then heard a practitioner say, in what 
seemed to me a boasting tone, he had not 
lost a patient ; but this I know, that before 
forty-eight hours had passed I helped to 
bury two who had been under his treat- 
ment. 

While speaking of my personal experience 
of this fever, I should leave the account 
incomplete did I fail to note a fact respect- 
ing "a presentiment' ' which fastened itself 
upon my mind in spite of all I could do 
to throw it off. For some time past the 
thought had occasionally occurred, I cannot 
tell why, that I should die of the disease 
on my birthday, the 15th of this month. 
"When taken with the fever, just three days 
before that date, — the very time which it 
takes in some instances to run its course, 
— this thought fastened itself upon my 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 129 

mind as a "presentiment of death ;" and, 
although by no means inclined to super- 
stition, I could not succeed in throwing it 
oft" until after twelve at night on Satur- 
day, when of course the time was past. I 
note this fact, because such presentiments 
have been very common in this fever, — 
perhaps owing to the disordered, excited 
state of the nervous system, — and in many 
an instance, by depressing the spirits, have 
had some influence, I fear, in producing 
the fatal effect they have foreshadowed. I 
am yet in a very feeble condition — by no 
means beyond the danger of relapse, — and 
therefore cannot speak of myself as one 
recovered; but this much is certain, my 
presentiment has not been fulfilled. 

I am now expecting to leave home for a 
short time, purposing to go with my family 
to Hampton on the morrow. In my pre- 
sent state of health I must be useless here 
for some time to come; and I am going 
now mainly for the purpose of getting my 



130 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

family, who have all along been unwilling 
to go unless I would go with them, beyond 
the range of this deadly epidemic. They 
may, it is true, have the poison now in their 
systems, and if so, it will doubtless work its 
way out, even in the most healthy place, as 
many of our citizens have sickened and died 
in almost all the towns and cities around 
us ; but my hope is, that in a more healthy 
atmosphere, even if they have the fever, 
they will have it in a milder form than they 
would here. And now that my motive for 
staying is taken away, at least for the pre- 
sent, I feel that the sooner we get away the 
better. 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 131 



LETTER IX. 

FAMILY AFFLICTIONS. 

Saturday, Sept 29, 1855. 

You will probably have heard, ere this 
letter reaches you, of the sore affliction 
which has befallen me. My house is now 
to be numbered among the many in this 
our city made desolate by this terrible 
pestilence. I know not what to compare 
the sudden withering of all my earthly 
happiness to, save the withering of Jonah's 
gourd "destroyed in a night;" and never, 
as now, have I understood that prophet's 
words — "It is better for me to die than to 
live.' , God has taken four out of seven 
from my little household; and the death 
of the last three — Mary, our eldest-born, 
Hatty Porter, my wife's sister, who had 
lived with us for so many years that she 
seemed like my own child, and, last of all, 



132 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

my dear wife also — has come so suddenly, 
so unexpectedly upon me, that at times I 
can hardly believe that they are all gone. 
Yet it is even so. God help me to say — 
"Thy will be done." 

When I last wrote you, we were all pack- 
ing up to leave for Hampton the next morn- 
ing. About dusk, a letter was brought me 
from Eichmond, containing the information 
that Mary had been prostrated by a return 
of the fever, and that this second attack 
seemed then to threaten a fatal termination. 
"When she left home, on Thursday of last 
week, we thought her so far recovered that 
she might safely leave ; and our friends in 
Eichmond having written us, begging us to 
send her to them, we determined that she 
should go. For two days after reaching her 
destination she seemed to be doing well ; so 
treacherous is this disease, especially during 
what may be called the stage of convales- 
cence ; but on Sabbath the fever returned 
upon her, slightly at first, but making steady 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 133 

progress, until, on the day on which the 
letter was written, she had begun to throw 
up "black vomit" So soon as I read this 
letter, I at once gave up all hope of her 
recovery; not because I considered the 
"black vomit" a fatal symptom in the case 
of a child of her age, — for I have seen many 
such here recover, — but because hers was a 
case of relapse, always more unmanageable 
than a first attack, and because I knew that 
she had a shattered constitution with which 
to combat the disease. I gave up all hope 
of her recovery. Not so her mother. The 
strong love of a mother's heart made her 
cling to the idea that, if she could but reach 
her child, and nurse her with her own hands, 
as she had through her first attack, she 
might yet live. And at once it was de- 
termined that, while the rest of the family 
should stop with me in Hampton* for a day 
or two, her mother should proceed at once 



* Hampton is in the neighbourhood of Norfolk. 
12 



134 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

to Richmond; and with this expectation 
we retired to our beds. 

Such were our plans. The plans of our 
Heavenly Father were very different. 
Awaking about midnight, I was conscious 
of that peculiar feeling which, to a person 
with a disordered nervous system, is the 
premonition of an approaching northeasterly 
storm ; and, knowing how terrible these 
storms had been in the spread of the pes- 
tilence, the fear was at once awakened 
that the sickness of some other member 
of the family would, in our case, as in that 
of many families which I could mention, 
stop our going upon the very eve of de- 
parture. This fear prevented my getting 
to sleep again; and before daylight it 
was realized. Cornelia, the next to the 
youngest of our children, was sleeping in 
the room with her aunt Hatty ; and when, 
about three o'clock, I heard the door of that 
room opened, it seemed to me that I knew 
what was coming as well as I did after the 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 135 

announcement was made that Cornelia was 
sick with all the symptoms of the fever. 
All thought of going was of course at an 
end. About sunrise the storm reached us ; 
and by ten o'clock Hatty also was in bed 
with the fever. 

In consequence of the derangement of all 
our means of communication with other 
places, and the necessarily irregular trans- 
mission of the mails, we did not hear again 
from Mary until, on Sabbath morning, we 
received the intelligence of her death on 
the Thursday before. She was but a child 
twelve years old ; and yet, I trust, she had 
been taught of the Spirit to know and love 
Him who hath revealed himself to our faith 
— blessed be his name! — as "the Good 
Shepherd" who "gathereth the lambs in 
his arms and carrieth them in his bosom." 
More than a year ago, during a revival 
of religion in our church, — much of the pre- 
cious fruit of which God has already gathered 
into his heavenly garner, — she was deeply 



136 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

impressed with, religious truth, and, before 
the fever first attacked her, had given 
pleasing evidence of a change of heart. Dur- 
ing her last sickness, as I learn from letters 
from friends who were with her, there was 
much to encourage the hope that she now 
sleeps in Jesus. She was the child of 
many prayers, — given to God and sealed 
with the seal of his precious covenant; 
and why should I rebel, when He has only 
taken that which, before heaven and earth, 
I had acknowledged to be his ? 

On Friday, Hatty's fever took a turn for 
the worse, her brain becoming affected, and 
an irresistible tendency manifested itself 
to that state of partial and troubled stupor 
so common in this disease. On Sabbath 
morning she breathed her last. She too, 
I trust, was one of the precious fruits of 
the revival in our church a little more than 
a year ago ; although, for particular reasons, 
she had never publicly connected herself 
with the Church of Christ. From the 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 137 

peculiar turn her disease took, she hardly 
spoke at all after we knew that she was in 
especial danger. I have learned, however, 
in my experience as a pastor, to look far more 
to the living than to the dying experience 
of those taken away, when I would know 
whether I might or might not have hope in 
their death ; and, from what I know of her 
religious exercises, I believe that, although 
it may be said of her, in the language of 
the prophet, "her sun hath gone down while 
it was yet day/' her sun has not gone down 
before the great work of life was done. 

On Sabbath morning, my dear wife — the 
main earthly dependence of us all in our 
sickness — was attacked by the fever ; and 
Grace, our youngest, — originally taken at the 
same time I was, but who had recovered so 
far as to be about again, — having no one to 
check her, had overplayed herself the day 
before, and so brought on a relapse; and 
thus were we all sick together. That Sab- 
bath-day was to me certainly the darkest 
12* 



138 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

day of my life. We bad just received the 
intelligence of Mary's death; Hatty was 
dying ; Cornelia and Grace — the only chil- 
dren left me — so ill that I had almost give a 
up the hope of their recovery ; and now 
she who had been our main earthly stay, — 
for I believe it is often the case that in such 
seasons of overwhelming trial the pious wife 
and mother exhibits more true Christian 
fortitude than the father, (certainly it was so 
in our case,) and I should do injustice to the 
memory of the dead did I speak of her in 
any other terms than as our main earthly 
stay, — she too was prostrated by the fever. 

There was no lack of kind attention on 
the part of friends. During all the earlier 
stages of the pestilence, and indeed until 
its greatest violence was passed, God had 
given me strength to render aid to others ; 
and now his promise was literally fulfilled : 
"Give, and it shall be given unto you; — 
good measure, pressed down, and shaken 
together, and running over, shall men give 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 139 

into your bosom. " The members of my 
own church who were able to be about, and 
the members of the Howard Association, 
left nothing undone which they could do 
for us. Dr. Wm. H. Freeman, of Philadel- 
phia, one of the first physicians from abroad 
to come to our aid, — who had laboured 
among us during all the long dreary weeks 
of the pestilence, and who, in connection 
with Dr. Wm. J. Moore, our family physi- 
cian, had attended all the cases in my 
household, — w r as unwearied in his attentions, 
coming always twice and sometimes three 
and four times a day, and staying all night 
with us on Tuesday and Wednesday nights. 
Dr. Moore was himself taken with the disease 
on Monday, and of course could not come 
after that day. All that medical science 
and skill could do was done ; yet all in vain. 
On Monday night Mrs. Armstrong began 
to throw up "black vomit.-' 

Up to this time, although she appeared ill, 
she had not seemed so ill as to awaken any 



140 TIIE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

special apprehension in my mind of a fatal 
termination of her disease. After that, how- 
ever, I could have but little hope ; for, in the 
case of persons over twenty-five years of 
age, very few indeed have recovered after 
the appearance of this fatal symptom. 
Through God's mercy, she had the perfect 
use of reason throughout the whole of 
Tuesday and Wednesday, until toward night 
on the last-mentioned day, when her mind 
began to w r ander; and she was spared the 
terrible bodily sufferings which I have seen 
some endure. Throughout these days God 
was with her of a truth. I have sat by 
many a death-bedside in days that are passed ; 
indeed, during the last six or seven weeks 
it seems to me I have been standing upon 
some "land's-end" of this nether world, 
with little else to do but to give the last 
" God speed you" to one after another of 
those I have known and loved, as the fasten- 
ings have been cast loose and they pushed 
out into the stream, and the current has 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. Ill 

swept them forever beyond the range of 
mortal sight ; but never have I witnessed 
a parting in more perfect peace, on the part 
of the one that was to go, than this. On 
Wednesday morning she had her two re- 
maining children brought to her bedside, and, 
after giving them certain little mementos of 
herself, told them, as her parting wish, that 
when in coming years they should think and 
speak of their mother, it should be not of 
that mother as in the grave, but of their 
mother with Christ in heaven. And when, 
a little later, as I was sitting with her, I said, 
" It will be pleasant to meet again with your 
mother, and our dear little ones, who have 
been taken before to our Father's house," she 
lay for a moment as if reflecting, and then 
replied, "Yes, it will be pleasant to meet 
with loved ones again ; but a pleasanter pros- 
pect than that, as it now appears to me, is 
that I shall soon ' see Jesus as he is and 
love him as I ought.' " Surely he who can 
doubt the truth of our Christian faith has 



142 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

never felt its power in such an hour as this. 
"The fool hath said in his heart, No God," 
writes David. A fool — yes, a "thrice-sod- 
den fool" — is he who can say " no God." On 
Thursday, about eleven o'clock, the willing 
spirit passed away; and late in the even- 
ing we laid the body beside her sister's. 

And now, as I recall the scenes of the 
last few days, and memory brings up one 
little incident after another of our parting, 
there is no gloomy shade — blessed be God ! — 
in the whole picture; there is no painful re- 
collection to cast its shadow upon the scene. 
It does seem as if the sun of " the better 
land" had shed its own mellow light upon 
the darkness of earth, where we travelled 
together during those days, and where we 
parted. But, as I look forward, — God help 
me, make me faithful and humble, teach 
me to serve him, and, above all, to trust him, 
"all the days of my appointed time, till my 
change come." 



TIIE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 143 



LETTER X. 

MORTALITY AMONG THE CLERGY AND PHYSICIANS RE- 
MARKABLE RECOVERY YELLOW FEVER A DISEASE NOT 

TO BE TRIFLED WITH — LETTERS FROM ABROAD "A 

CITY OF CONVALESCENTS. " 

Tuesday, Oct. 2, 1855. 

I have just returned from the funeral 
of Kev. ¥m. Jackson, pastor of St. Paul's 
Church, in this city. "A good man" he 
was, "and full of faith. " I recollect meet- 
ing him shortly after the fever first ap- 
peared, and his then speaking to me of the 
purpose he had entertained of leaving the 
city during the months of August and Sep- 
tember to recruit; "but this purpose," said 
he, "I have now given up, for, should this 
fever spread, as there seems reason to fear 
that it will, we will all be needed." Since 
then I have met him frequently, going about 
to visit the sick, to comfort the heart-stricken, 



144 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

to bury the dead ; and I have been struck 
with the cheerful countenance and tone of 
conversation he has maintained. Surely, 
none but the "good man and full of faith" 
could have lived as he has during this 
t lying summer; and his peaceful end was 
fitting part and parcel of his life. 

Wm. Jackson is the fourth of the Pro- 
testant ministers who remained, engaged in 
the active discharge of ministerial duty, that 
has fallen. First, Anthony Dibbrell, pastor 
of the Granby Street Methodist Church; 
then Stephen Jones, pastor of the African 
Methodist Church; then Vm. Cadogan 
Bagnall, a young minister of the Baptist 
Church, who died during the period of my 
sickness ; and now, Win. Jackson. Three 
yet remain, all having had the fever, but 
now, through God's good providence, con- 
valescent. Four out of seven is a frightful 
mortality. When I wrote you, as I did 
some weeks ago, that unless a miracle pre- 
served us there would be more graves than 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 145 

one in our cemetery, when the pestilence 
was passed, to bear witness that the Protest- 
ant clergy had not forsaken their posts in 
the time of danger, I wrote just as I felt; 
but I did not think there would be so manj T 
witnesses to this truth then as our cemetery 
now contains. And the mortality among 
our resident physicians who remained is 
as great as among the Protestant clergy. 
Eleven out of eighteen have died, and not 
one, I believe, has escaped an attack of the 
fever. The mortality among the white 
population, although not so great as among 
these two classes, yet does not, I think, fall 
very far short of it. As nearly as I can 
learn, about five thousand of our white popu- 
lation remained, and of this number, I be- 
lieve, two thousand are now in the grave. 
Doubtless, He at whose bidding the pesti- 
lence has come has his own wise purposes 
to accomplish in all this ; and we shall yet 
say, in heaven if not on earth, " Thou hast 
done all things well." Yet by us, and at 

13 



146 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

this time, must God be worshipped as lie 
that "maketh darkness his secret place; his 
pavilion round about him, dark waters and 
thick clouds of the sky." 

On the day before I was taken sick, I 
visited a young man, a member of my 
church, whom I left, as I thought, past all 
reasonable hope of recovery, — indeed, in a 
dying state. Reason was gone, and the 
troubled stupor which generally precedes 
death in this disease had supervened; and 
my own thought was that ere the sun should 
set he would need his coffin. During my 
own sickness I was not allowed to inquire 
about the sick; and when enough recovered 
to begin again to inquire, so confident was 
I that he must be dead, that I did not even 
ask about him. A day or two ago, as I sat 
by the window, I was startled for the moment 
by the sight of this young man approaching 
my house. I do not think I could have 
been more startled by an apparition from 
the dead. I mention this case thus particu- 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 147 

larly because it furnishes a striking con- 
firmation of the remark of a physician of 
long experience in the treatment of yellow 
fever, that it is a disease in which we should 
never utterly despair. 

In contrast with this case, I have seen 
many in the past two months apparently 
attacked very slightly, and yet the disease, 
resisting ail medical treatment, has pro- 
gressed steadily to a fatal termination. And, 
what seems yet stranger to me, I have seen 
cases in which, up to the time at which the 
disease had almost done its work, when 
death was just about to claim its victim, the 
patient has presented to the eye of a non- 
professional observer almost no symptom 
of disease at all. A lucid period imme- 
diately preceding the fatal termination of 
this fever is very common, — so much so, 
that I now feel sorry to hear it reported of 
any one, five or six days after the attack 
commenced, "he seems a great deal better 
to-day. " Some three weeks ago, I was 



148 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

called to visit a young woman in the How- 
ard Hospital. She and her mother were in 
the same room. The young woman did not 
seem to suffer at all, and, not knowing the 
exact stage of her disease, I thought that in 
a few days she would be well again. Her 
mother, an abandoned woman, had got up 
and dressed herself in spite of the nurses, 
and was cursing most profanely because her 
daughter would not rise and quit the hos- 
pital with her. This was late in the even- 
ing, and before morning they were both 
dead. While endorsing, then, the remark 
just quoted, that yellow fever is a disease in 
which we should never utterly despair, no 
matter how desperate the case may seem, I 
would add — it is a disease which should 
never be trifled with, no matter how slight 
the attack may appear, no matter how favour- 
ably the case may seem to be progressing. 
Yellow fever, like the mole, works beneath 
the surface, and beyond the range of human 
sight; and this is one principal reason why 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 149 

it is a disease so much to be feared, and so 
much dreaded by those who know any thing 
about it. 

I find that during my sickness a large 
number of letters have come to me, many 
of them containing aid for the suffering, 
and all of them expressing the warmest 
sympathy with our stricken people in this 
their season of sore trial. And this not 
from one section of the country only, nor 
from old and tried friends alone, but from 
all parts of our land, and from those 
whose faces I have never seen, and who 
could know nothing of us save that we were 
their brethren and in deepest affliction. 
The money sent has been in part, and shall 
be altogether, disposed of in accordance 
with the wishes of the generous donors, 
and many a case of suffering will it relieve. 
But I mention these letters rather to speak 
of the kind words they contain. Perhaps 
some utilitarian might ask, of what use are 
kind words to people in affliction? I an- 

13* 



150 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

swer as I have learned by experience, that 
to persons situated as we have been and 
yet are, called to endure as well as to act, 
encountering all the danger of battle with 
little of its excitement, nothing is more 
cheering than the assurance that we are not 
forgotten in the hearts and in the prayers 
of those whom God has placed in happier 
homes. Never before have I understood 
the great principle which underlies our 
Saviour's promise, "AYhosoever shall give 
to drink unto one of these little ones a cup 
of cold icater only, verily, I say unto you, he 
shall in no wise lose his reward.' ' "A cup 
of cold water only!" it is a little thing in it- 
self, and in general is esteemed a thing of 
little worth ; and yet, to the traveller in the 
desert, faltering through thirst, "a cup of 
cold water only" is more precious than 
gold. Just so is it with kind words. "Bear 
ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the 
law of Christ," is a sentiment which wit- 
nesses in itself that it is from heaven. 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 151 

There is another aspect of the case, too, 
in which I love to think of the sympathy 
with us in our afflictions manifested in all 
parts of this our broad land. The aid sent 
us cannot be the result of a cold calcula- 
tion of what, in the end, will put money 
into the pockets of the giver. In many an 
instance there is no conceivable way in 
which such a return could ever be made. 
The sympathy for us is, I firmly believe, a 
sympathy welling up from the very depths 
of the heart, and therefore is a witness as 
to what is in the heart of "this great peo- 
ple.'' In my childhood, I recollect to have 
read an old fairy-tale, in which the mur- 
murings of streams are represented as 
fashioning themselves into articulate sounds 
to the ear of those who stooped to drink 
of their waters. Methinks the fancy of 
the old fairy-tale has here its realization ; 
and the words this flowing stream utters 
are, "We are all brethren." 

Since the years of my youth I have never 



152 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

been a politician ; and as a pastor I have 
carefully eschewed all meddling with the 
party questions of the day. I have never, 
under any pretext, introduced such questions 
into the pulpit; for I am no believer in 
what has been called "preaching the gospel 
at both ends ;" — to preach the gospel at 
heaven's end is as much as the few years 
of ministry which God hath assigned me 
here on earth will suffice for. But I love 
my country, my whole country, and I love 
to pray to God for "this thy great people." 
As I have read the speeches made by angry 
politicians at the hustings, in our State legis- 
latures, on the floor of Congress, and even 
from the pulpit, — politicians who would treat 
our bond of union as "a thing of naught,". 
— I have sometimes feared lest in righteous 
judgment on the folly of our people God 
might permit the severance of our States. 
From time to time, however, incidents have 
occurred — and this wide-spread sympathy 
for us I look upon as one of them— which 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 153 

have shown that these noisy politicians were 
not the people; and, further, that they did 
not represent the people. Could I whisper a 
word in the ear of some who seem to be 
honestly disunionists, it would be a word 
of caution; I would tell them, " There is 
a power slumbering beneath the surface, 
which, if aroused, will sweep you before it 
as the whirlwind sweeps the chaff from the 
summer threshing-floor." And every kind 
word spoken, and every dollar sent us, from 
the North, the South, the East, the West, is 
a witness at once for the existence and the 
might of this slumbering power. We are 
one people, and I have faith to believe that, 
for his own wise purposes, God means to 
keep us one people. 

I am now getting ready, a second time, 
to leave Norfolk for a few weeks, as soon as 
my two remaining children, now convales- 
cent, are able to travel without danger of 
relapse. I find that I am recovering my 
strength very slowly here; and now there 



154 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

is but little for a minister of the gospel 
to do here, unless he has the strength to 
visit from house to house and comfort the 
afflicted. The fever has swept over the 
whole city ; and now r , in the words of our 
acting mayor, "we are a city of convales- 
cents.' ' So universally has the fever pre- 
vailed, that there is not a family in all my 
congregation which has remained in the 
city and escaped. Indeed, I know of but 
one family of any size which has escaped 
the fever altogether. As you know, I lived 
for a number of years in the mountainous 
portion of our State. In that region, 
when burning brush at "the clearings," 
in the early spring, the fire often "gets 
out," and whole mountains are burned over 
ere it can be checked. Travel over one 
of these mountains a little later in the 
season, when the forest trees are beginning 
to clothe themselves in the garb of summer 
again, and you cannot but be struck with 
the strange tinge of desolation which even 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 155 

the life of the forest presents. Very many 
of the trees have been entirely consumed ; 
a little mound of ashes marks the spot where 
once they stood ; and those that still live and 
are beginning to put forth their leaves — their 
trunks are all blackened and scorched by 
the flames, and even the edges of the grow- 
ing leaves have been seared, and present the 
appearance of a sort of half-life rather than 
of the vigorous growth proper to the season. 
I know not how better to describe our city 
at the present time than by saying that it 
most forcibly recalls to my mind one of 
these " burnt forests" in the mountains. 



156 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 



LETTER XI. 

DISAPPEARANCE OF THE FEVER — TIIE ORPHANS — THE 
PLAGUE-FLY — DESCRIPTION OF IT — HYPOTHESES RE- 
SPECTING ITS NATURE. 

Tuesday, Nov. 13, 1855. 

After an absence of some four weeks, I 
am now at home again. Our city begins to 
wear a more cheerful aspect than it did at 
the time I left, though veiy different still 
from the noisy, busy Norfolk of four months 
ago. Since my return, on the sixth of this 
month, there have been, so far as I can 
learn, but two deaths from yellow fever, and 
both of these in the case of persons who 
returned to the city before the frost which 
occurred toward the last of October. Among 
those who have returned since that frost 
(and I suppose one-half of our refugees at 
the least are now at home again) no case of 
fever has occurred that I can hear of. I 



THE SUMMER OF TIIE PESTILENCE. 157 

hope therefore that we may now speak of 
the pestilence as passed, of "the summer 
of the pestilence' ' as ended. 

On last Sabbath, for the first time for 
nearly two months, I met my people again 
in the sanctuary; and I could not throw 
off the saddening impression of the scene, 
— presenting, as it did, so much that was 
calculated to dishearten one that has lived 
and laboured for our Zion. In the few 
months last past, God's own hand has 
thrown down the building of years. Our 
church, as to numbers, now stands pretty 
nearly where it did ten years ago, — not 
altogether, it is true, but in large part, ow- 
ing to the ravages of the pestilence. In 
all the congregation present on last Sab- 
bath — and one-half of our families at the 
least were represented there — I noticed but 
three families that were not clad in mourn- 
ing. And in every part of the house there 
were vacant seats which, as the eye rested 
on them, called up to memory the forms of 

14 



158 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

those accustomed to occupy them — forms 
which shall no more meet the eye on earth. 
Among the dead of the pestilence are reck- 
oned some of our best members, — those 
who by their deeds and prayers upheld the 
hands and cheered the heart of their pastor, 
whose countenance and co-operation made 
him feel strong in every good work, — those 
whose godly lives were ever a sufficient an- 
swer to the sneer of the infidel, " What do 
these Christians more than others?" But 
why should we yield to despondency ? The 
church on earth was never designed as any 
thing more than a recruiting station for the 
" sacramental host of the elect;" and all 
that can be said with truth of their removal 
is that the "Captain of our salvation" has 
found them worthy, through sovereign grace, 
of being incorporated in that host a little 
earlier than others. 

In one part of the church, on Sabbath 
morning, sat "the orphans" now gathered 
under the protecting care of the Howard 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 159 

Association. There they sat, some sixty 
in number, ranging from fourteen to two 
and three years in age, all made parentless 
by the terrible pestilence. Some of them, 
when found, were in the house alone with 
the dead body of their last remaining pa- 
rent ; and they, poor little things, so young 
that they did not know their own names. 
And there they must have perished but for 
the mercy which He who hath revealed 
himself as "a father to the fatherless" had 
implanted in the hearts of those by whose 
kindness they are now sheltered. About 
sixty of these orphans were at church. About 
eighty in all are now under the charge of the 
Norfolk Howard Association ; and — blessed 
be God ! — through the assistance sent us from 
abroad, in connection with what we can do 
at home, I hope that there will be no lack 
of the means needed to provide comfort- 
ably for them all. 

But it was not of these matters I purposed 
writing you to-day. When I had the plea- 



160 THE BUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

sure of meeting you a few days ago, you 
made inquiry about the plague-fly, as it is 
called, which had appeared in our city, and 
about which you desired to know what 
could be learned. To answer your inquiries 
respecting this fly was my purpose to-day. 

The plague-fly has received its name 
from the belief that its appearance marks 
the crisis in the prevalence of epidemic 
yellow fever. So uniformly is this true in 
Southern cities, that I have been told the 
negroes in those cities believe that this fly 
consumes — actually eats up — the morbific- 
matter which constitutes the immediate cause 
of the disease. Certain it is that its ap- 
pearance in our city marked the crisis of 
the epidemic, in so far as my observation 
goes. I noticed it first on the last day of 
August ; on the th5rd, fourth, and fifth days 
of September it was seen in its greatest 
numbers ; and by the time I was taken down 
with the fever (September 13) it had almost 
entirely disappeared. During my sickness 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 161 

a letter came to me from a physician in a 
distant city, asking me, if possible, to send 
him some specimens of the fly; and after 
i my recovery, for the purpose of complying 
with this request, I made careful search 
throughout my house, that, if possible, I 
might find some ; but in vain. About the 
4th of September I caught some of them, 
and, as their bodies did not seem elastic, like 
those of the common house-fly, but soft to 
the touch, in order that I might make sure 
of preserving them I placed them in a vial, 
corking it as tightly as I could, and put- 
ting it away in a safe place. This vial I 
now brought out again, when, to my sur- 
prise, I found that the flies had entirely dis- 
appeared, nothing but a little dark-coloured 
dust remaining in their stead. In one of 
the rooms of the house which had .not been 
used after about the 5th of September, I 
noticed spots covered with a similar dust in 
the window-sills and on the floor in the 

corners of the room, — apparently the places 
u* 



162 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

where the bodies of the flies had fallen 
and subsequently rotted. All this seemed 
the more strange to me, since, in all my 
previous experience in preserving insects, 
(and I have preserved many in years gone 
by,) I never found any difficulty in keeping 
insects of this class. 

The plague-fly, as I recollect it, and I ex- 
amined it with some care, is almost identical 
in shape -with the smaller blow-fly or shad- 
fly, as it is sometimes called, the posterior 
segment of its body being larger and longer 
in proportion to the whole body than that 
of the common house-fly ; — the main differ- 
ence between it and the shad-fly being in 
the texture and colour of the wings and in 
the colour of the bodv. The win<^s, instead 
of being transparent, are opaque, and of a 
glossy bluish-black colour; and the- body, 
in the case of those I first saw, of an ochrey 
yellow; — in one I noticed on the morning 
I was taken sick, of a reddish orange. It 
differed from the common shad-fly also in 



THE SUMMER OF TIIE PESTILENCE. 163 

the fact that its body and even its wings 
seemed to lack the elasticity noticeable in 
those of that fly ; and the insect itself was 
exceedingly sluggish, hardly flying at all, and 
very short-lived. Within twenty-four hours 
of the time they first appeared in my house, I 
found numbers of them lying dead in the win- 
dow-sills and in the corners of the rooms. 

As to the origin and nature of this fly, I 
cannot entertain for a moment the idea I 
have heard expressed, that it is but the 
insect in its perfect state which in an ani- 
malcular state floats in the atmosphere and 
constitutes the morbific cause of the epi- 
demic. The theory of the animalcular na- 
ture of the cause of yellow fever I leave 
to physicians to discuss ; but the conversion 
of a proper animalcule so small as to be 
invisible to the naked eye (and such this 
animalcule must be if it exist? at all) into an 
insect such as the plague-fly, is contrary to 
the whole analogy of nature ; and nothing 
but a gross misconception of the character 



164 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

of insect-transformations could lead any 
person to entertain such an idea. 

Of the origin of this fly either one of the 
following hypotheses appears to me in it- 
self probable. A more careful investiga- 
tion of the subject than I have yet had it 
in my power to make can alone determine 
which, if any one of them, is the true one. 

1. We may suppose that this fly is a na- 
tive in those countries in which yellow fever 
is an indigenous disease, and of such a 
habit as to multiply rapidly in those atmo- 
spheric conditions which accompany the rise 
and spread of yellow fever; that this 
insect, having been brought here, perhaps 
in the egg or larva state, in the hold of the 
Ben Franklin, one generation had lived its 
time, in such small numbers as not to at- 
tract attention ; that this imported gene- 
ration has produced its eggs in vast num- 
bers, and that from these eggs the sw-arms 
of plague-flies which have been in all our 
dwellings have sprung. Of the production 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 165 

of insects in immense numbers from a very 
small stock, in just this way, we have many 
illustrations. 

2. We may suppose that the fly is one 
which in ordinary seasons exists in small 
numbers throughout the country, but, in 
consequence of its small numbers, or because 
particular attention is not turned to it, 
generally escapes observation ; but that this 
summer, the same conditions favourable to 
the production and spread of yellow fever 
being favourable to its rapid multiplication, 
it has been produced in the immense num- 
bers in which it appeared in our city. You 
are doubtless aware of the fact that in some 
parts of our State all that is necessary to 
cover a field with a luxuriant growth of white 
clover is just that wood-ashes be spread upon 
it. I recollect once to have heard a farmer 
declare his belief that white clover needed 
no seed to spring from, but was capable of 
being produced, by a sort of " equivocal ge- 
neration," from mere wood-ashes. The true 



166 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

explanation of this phenomenon, and the 
one universally admitted by well-informed 
persons, is that white clover exists in small 
quantities mingled with other grasses at 
all times where wood-ashes will produce 
this effect; and that, being what is called 
"a potash plant," the application of the 
ashes so stimulates its growth and produc- 
tion that it soon overgrows and takes the 
place of the other grasses with which it had 
been intermixed. In a precisely analogous 
way we may suppose the multiplication of 
the plague-fly to be affected by the morbific 
conditions which give rise to epidemic 
yellow fever. 

3. We may suppose this fly to be the 
shad-fly, or possibly the common house-fly, 
in a diseased condition — that diseased con- 
dition arising from the same causes which 
produce a like effect in the human race. 
That the lower orders of animals, and even 
insects, should be affected by the same epi- 
demic influences which affect man, is by no 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 1G7 

means without a precedent, as every one 
familiar with the history of disease in its 
more terrible forms must know. 

Of these three hypotheses, I confess that 
at the present time the latter seems to me 
the most probable one. The soft and even 
slimy condition of the fly, unlike that of 
other insects belonging to the same natural 
family, — its extremely sluggish habit and 
short life, — and especially the rapid decay 
of its body after death, — all seem to favour 
this idea. Either hypothesis will accord 
very well with the fact that the appearance 
of the fly marks the crisis of the epidemic, 
though perhaps the latter one more fully than 
either of the others ; and this after all is the 
most important fact to be noted respect- 
ing it. 



168 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 



LETTER XTI. 

RESULTS OF MATURE REFLECTION — HOW WAS THE FEVER 
INTRODUCED INTO NORFOLK? — WHY WAS IT SO FATAL? 
IS YELLOW FEVER CONTAGIOUS? — PRACTICAL IN- 
FERENCES. 

Monday, Dec. 31, 1855. 

In my letters, written you from time to 
time, I have given you a general account of 
the course of the yellow fever in this city, 
noting facts and incidents as they appeared 
or were credibly reported at the time. In 
the present letter I purpose to give you the 
results of mature reflection and more care- 
ful examination, especially as bearing upon 
certain points of practical importance. Of 
course these conclusions are based upon 
my observation of the yellow fever as it 
has prevailed here during the past sum- 
mer. Whether that disease would be go- 
verned by the same laws in other places, 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 169 

or even here, in other seasons, I cannot 
tell. I shall give you, in part at least, the 
facts upon which my conclusions rest, and 
you can then attach to them just that im- 
portance which you may think they deserve. 
And let me say further, I do not purpose 
taking any part in the medical controversy 
respecting the nature of yellow fever. That 
I leave to physicians, as those to whom it 
properly belongs. 

How was the yellow fever introduced among 
us? Was it imported in the Ben Franklin, 
or did it originate on the spot ? 

This is a question which it is exceedingly 
difficult to answer; and although a com- 
mittee of physicians, under appointment 
from our city councils, are engaged in the 
investigation of this subject, I doubt whe- 
ther, after the most protracted examination, 
they will be able to give an answer which 
will command the assent of all. When the 
fever was first known to exist among us, in 
the then excited state of the public mind it 

15 



170 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

was impossible to tell what to believe, and 
what not to believe, of the many reports 
respecting its origin which were passing 
from mouth to mouth. Now that this ex- 
citement has passed away, it seems to me 
almost as impossible, though for a different 
reason, to get at all the facts in the case; 
and this difficulty is the greater now be- 
cause Drs. Trugein and Upshur, the former 
of Portsmouth, the latter of Norfolk, — the 
two physicians in whose practice most of 
the earlier cases occurred, — are both num- 
bered with the dead. 

It is now said that the first clearly-marked 
case in Gosport of which any information 
can be obtained was not that of a labourer 
employed in breaking up the hold of the 
Ben Franklin, as reported in my first let- 
ter, but that of a woman living very near 
to the point at which the Ben Franklin 
lay ; her case coming under the care of the 
physician on the 80th of June, while the 
labourer already mentioned was not visited 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 171 

until the 3d of July. But before this, it 
appears that a seaman had been taken sick 
on board the steamer as early as the 15th 
of June, and before she left the quarantine; 
that he was taken to the Marine Hospital 
on the 21st, and died with " black vomit" 
on the 22d of June. There was a case of 
fever, then, on board the Ben Franklin at 
the time she came up to Gosport, and a 
case which had originated on board that 
vessel ; and the fever subsequently existing 
in Gosport seems very naturally referable 
to this steamer as its point of origin. 

At first it was currently reported that 
all the earlier cases in Portsmouth could 
be clearly traced to Gosport. This, it 
appears, was a mistaken idea on the part 
of the public. Upon the authority of one 
of the first physicians in Portsmouth, it is 
now said that the first case of yellow fever 
in that place occurred in a house on Scott's 
Creek, a stream on the northwest side of 
Portsmouth, while Gosport lies to the south. 



172 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

This case was first visited by a physician on 
the 24th of June, and the patient died four 
days later. This case, then, occurred six 
days before the first case in Gosport; and, as 
the person was one who had been bedridden 
for months, it can in no probable way be 
traced to Gosport. 

A few days before the commencement of 
bis last sickness, Dr. Upshur, who died of 
the fever late in September, stated to me 
that the first cases in Xorfolk, in his opinion, 
could not be traced to Gosport; and he 
called my attention to an inconsistency in 
the commonly-received account of the mat- 
ter which had not before arrested my atten- 
tion. That account, as reported in the 
Herald of July 30 and copied by me in my 
first letter, was that the yellow fever had 
been introduced into Barry's Eow by certain 
families who had removed thither from Gos- 
port ten days before. Now, the first cases 
reported by Dr. Upshur occurred in Barry's 
Row on the 16th of July ; that is, four days 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 173 

before the removal of these families from 
Gosport. 

These three points, in each of which the 
fever seems to have originated independ- 
ently of the others, — viz. : Page and Allen's 
shipyard in Gosport on the south, the 
house on Scott's Creek on the northwest, 
and Barry's Row on the northeast, — are at 
the three angles of a nearly equilateral tri- 
angle, measuring not far from one and a 
half miles on a side ; and if we draw a line 
from the southern angle, bisecting that an- 
gle, this line will mark the course of our 
prevailing winds during the summer, and 
will divide the region over which the fever 
prevailed into two nearly equal parts. Such 
are the ascertained facts respecting the 
origin of the fever; and I know not how 
better to express the only conclusion which 
they seem to me to authorize than by using 
the words of a physician with whom I was 
in conversation a few days ago: — " The first 
case in Gosport seems pretty clearly to 

15* 



174 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

favour the idea of the importation of the 
fever in the Ben Franklin ; the first cases in 
Portsmouth and Norfolk seem just as clear- 
ly to favour the idea of its local origin. " It 
would not be a very difficult matter, with 
the aid of a few plausible suppositions and 
a little torturing of these facts, to make 
them bear unequivocal testimony in favour 
of either theory. But as I have no theory 
to support, I will leave this work entirely to 
those who have. I have an opinion, how- 
ever, and that I will frankly state. Taking 
the facts stated above in connection with 
other well-known facts, such as the coming 
of a French steamer into our harbour early 
in the summer of 1854, from which seventy 
cases of yellow fever were taken and treated 
at the Naval Hospital, (nearer by half to 
Norfolk than either the house on Scott's 
Creek or Page and Allen's shipyard,) and 
yet not one case originating therefrom, — the 
flight of our citizens with the fever in their 
blood, during the present summer, and their 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 175 

subsequent death in all the towns and cities 
around us, without thus originating a case 
of fever in any of those places, — the con- 
clusion to which I have come is (unphilo- 
sophical as it may appear to some) that the 
yellow fever would have desolated our city 
even if the Ben Franklin had never entered 
our waters; that all that vessel did was 
simply to hasten the outbreak of the pesti- 
lence and locate it in its commencement; 
that our condition in the early summer may 
be fitly represented by that of a pile of 
smokiDg flax, into which the Ben Franklin 
cast a blazing brand, thus hastening a con- 
flagration which would soon have burst out 
without such aid; that, but for our state of 
preparedness for the fever, that steamer 
might have come and gone as did the 
French steamer in 1854, and her visit 
been, ere this, forgotten. I look upon the 
pestilence under which we have suffered as, 
in this respect, like to the epidemic cholera, 
known to us simply as "the pestilence that 



176 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

walketh in darkness, the destruction that 
wasteth at noonday." God only, who di- 
recteth its steps, knoweth whence it came 
and whither it hath gone. 

I have lately read an essay on yellow fever 
from the pen of Wm. Fergusson, M.D., an 
eminent Scotch physician, of twenty years' 
experience in the treatment of yellow fever 
in the West India Islands; and, although 
there are some things in his essay with which 
my observation does not accord, the opinion 
he expresses on this point I can fully sub- 
scribe to. Discussing the nature of the 
fever, he writes: "It came from Boulam, 
says the contagionist, and is a pure conta- 
gion of negro intercourse, a concomitant 
of the old slave trade ; but the blacks, as we 
have seen, never had and cannot take the 
disease; and long, I believe, before our slave 
trade existed, or when, if it existed at all, 
it must have been in embryo, — when Penn 
and Venables first subjugated Jamaica to the 
British crown, — the invaders — a most lawless 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 177 

bucanier force, by-the-by — were so handled 
by the tropical pestilence that it was be- 
lieved they had become the objects of 
heaven's peculiar vengeance. Its unex- 
pected bursts, invading where there is no- 
thing in the seasons to account for such visi- 
tation, are strange and mysterious, but not 
more so than among ourselves, when dis- 
eases previously mild suddenly change their 
character and assume the most malignant 
aspect. We may often witness, even under 
our best temperatures, unexpected attacks 
of malignant erysipelas, puerperal fever, scar- 
latina, measles, &c. ; while at other times, 
apparently of more unfavourable aspect, 
these probably cannot be called into ex- 
istence at all, or, if they do come, are un- 
attended with any malignant character. 
These things are beyond our ken ; we can 
only see, and tremble, and wonder." And 
afterward he writes: — "There is much 
of the unfathomable in regard to yellow 
fever. Its occult sources, — its appalling out- 



178 TIIE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

breaks, often without preliminary warning, — 
the absence of gradation in the types of 
fever previous to the grand explosion, — its 
being restricted to the European races, and 
being confined almost entirely to the AVestera 
world. — mark it as a disease equally strange 
and terrible." 

Can any reason be assigned why the yellow fever 
was so terribly destructive in Norfolk during 
the past summer. — so mack more so them it has 
ever been even in New Orleans ? 

As it appears to me, one principal rea- 
son why it was so terribly destructive in 
our city is to be found in the fact that 
there were but few among us protected 
against its attack by having previously 
had the disease. It is one of the most 
clearly-ascertained laws of yellow fever 
that in its attack it so exhausts the sus- 
ceptibility of the system to the disease 
that it is rarely the case a person suffers 
from it a second time ; or, if attacked a 
second time, the attack is a slight one. 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 179 

Hence, at the South, they are now resort- 
ing to inoculation for protection against 
this fever, just as formerly they resorted to 
similar means for protection against small- 
pox. In New Orleans, the fever prevails to 
a greater or less extent almost every season ; 
and hence the great body of those who re- 
main there during the sickly season are 
those who, having once had it, are not liable 
to have it again. In Norfolk, on the con- 
trary, nearly thirty years had elapsed since 
it had prevailed to any extent; and it 
was only here and there that one of our 
citizens could expect exemption on the 
ground of having once had the fever. 
What confirms me in this opinion is the 
fact that the difference between Norfolk 
and New Orleans was not in the ratio 
which the number of deaths bore to the 
number of cases, — for this ratio was nearly 
the same, — but in the ratio which the num- 
ber of cases bore to the number of our peo- 
ple who remained in the city. I may say 



180 THE SUMMER OF TIIE PESTILENCE. 

with almost literal truth, of our white popu- 
lation who remained at home we all had the 
fever. 

There was nothing very peculiar in the 
season, unless it be in the frequent occur- 
rence of the chill northeasterly storms 
mentioned in my former letters, and the 
frequent failure in our usual sea-breeze, 
consequent, I suppose, upon these storms. 
Neither drought nor unusual heat charac- 
terized the summer last past. JsTor was 
there any thing in the condition of our city, 
that I saw, different from what it has been 
for the last five years — the time during 
which I have been a resident of Norfolk. 
There is a good deal of made land in the 
city ; and the filling-in has been done in 
part with pine-wood and with mud from 
the river-bottom; but then, as you know, 
this kind of filling in has been used here 
for the last fifty years. And, besides, in 
Portsmouth there is little or no made 
land of this kind, and yet the fever was as 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 181 

I 

fatal there as with us ; and with us it was 
no more fatal in the parts of the city im- 
mediately adjoining this made land than 
it was in those parts where the virgin soil 
had never been disturbed ; indeed, the only 
family of any size that, remaining through- 
out the summer, escaped the fever altoge- 
ther, was a family residing near the west 
end of Main Street, where this made land 
stretched all along to the windward of them. 
There are filthy portions of our city, too, 
as there are in all places of the size of Nor- 
folk ; yet these places were not more filthy 
this summer, I think, than usual; and, 
although the fever seemed first to locate 
itself in them, when it subsequently spread 
to cleaner portions it was as fatal there as 
in Barry's Row. 

Here again let me quote a remark or two 
from the essay of Dr. Fergusson. " It is im- 
possible to imagine a country of purer soil 
than the island of Barbadoes. It has long 
been thoroughly cleared; but, as it is the 

16 



182 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

ordinary landing-place of fresh troops from 
Europe, there was no place during the war 
where there existed greater mortality and 
suffering from yellow fever." "Stagnation 
of atmosphere accounts for much in regard 
to it, but not for all ; vegetable putrefaction 
for little or none ; nor does malaria for the 
whole, unless it be some occult malaria of 
the Atlantic shores ; for, prolific as the 
Eastern tropic may be, and certainly is, of 
malaria in all its forms, it rarely produces 
the epidemic characterized by the leading 
symptom of black vomit.' ' 

Did the yellow fever, as prevailing in Norfolk 
during the past summer, appear to be a con- 
tagious disease ? 

In the popular sense of the term, a con- 
tagious disease is one propagated by contact 
with the sick, or through the instrumen- 
tality of the breath of the sick, or some subtle 
effluvium from the diseased or dead body, 
and consequently a disease to be avoided by 
keeping entirely aloof from the sick and 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 183 

the dead. An epidemic disease, on the other 
hand, is one the immediate cause of which 
appears to be in the atmosphere, and hence 
it is likely to be taken by all the people 
residing in a certain place or district at the 
same time, and in which there is no danger 
in nursing the sick or handling the dead, 
if this be done out of the district in which 
the epidemic prevails. Thus understanding 
these terms, I do not hesitate to express the 
opinion, and that with great confidence in 
its correctness, that the yellow fever which 
has prevailed among us was an epidemic 
and not a contagious disease. This opinion 
is at variance with the popular opinion here- 
tofore prevailing in this part of the country, 
and at variance with the opinion I had always 
entertained myself until the experience of 
the past summer satisfied me of its correct- 
ness; and, as it is a point of practical import- 
ance, I will state the facts which have satis- 
fied my own mind somewhat more fully 
than otherwise would have been the case. 



184 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

The few members of the Presbyterian 
church (and I speak thus particularly of 
them because I can speak of them from my 
own knowledge) who, remaining in the city, 
escaped the fever altogether, were almost 
without exception those who were active in 
nursing the sick and ministering to then 
necessities ; while the few who carefully 
secluded themselves, avoiding all such com- 
munication with the sick as w r ould spread a 
contagious disease, almost without excep- 
tion took the fever. 

Those who were active in ministering to 
the sick, and who did take the fever, did not 
take it, as a general thing, until as an epi- 
demic it reached the part of the city in 
which they resided. The cases of apparent 
exception to this general rule were most, if 
not all of them, I believe, like that of my 
nephew, Edmund James, who spent the night 
in a part of the city to which the disease 
had spread. In my own case, I was for 
more than six weeks almost constantly 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 18. r > 

during the day among the sick, the dying, 
and the dead ; often talking and praying 
with them when their breath was so offen- 
sive (for in this disease the breath gene- 
rally becomes very offensive before death) 
that I have quitted the room sick at the 
stomach — and this in parts of the city 
where the fever was raging with greatest 
violence ; and yet I did not take the fever 
until as an epidemic it reached the part of 
the city in which I lived ; and then I was 
one of the first to be prostrated by it. And 
I could mention many other cases similar 
to my own. 

Those employed in burying the dead, in 
so far as I know, did not take the fever 
until as an epidemic it reached the part of 
the city in which they dwelt. No man could 
have laboured at his calling more faithfully 
than Mr. Dobs, our principal grave-digger. 
From early in the morning until late in the 
evening he was constantly at work in the 
cemeteries. I have myself seen him eating 

16* 



186 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

his meals there; and he laboured thus when, 
before the order was issued forbidding inter- 
ment in vaults, the stench from the dead 
bodies was sickening; and yet, throughout 
almost the whole summer, he remained as 
at other seasons. He lived at the extreme 
northern end of the city — the part to which 
the fever extended latest of all. But it did 
extend to that part of the city; and then he 
and his wife both died of it. After having 
helped to bury almost all "the dead of the 
pestilence," he himself was by other hands 
laid among them. 

Those who resided in the adjoining coun- 
try, and came into the city during the day 
only, in no instance that I have heard of 
took the fever. Some in my own congrega- 
tion there were who acted thus ; and they 
all escaped. So with the country-people 
who attended our markets ; and there were 
some who attended throughout the season. 
Xot one of them, that I have heard of, died 
of the fever. 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 187 

Our citizens fled in almost every direction, 
many of them with the poison in their 
systems; and they sickened and died in 
almost every place to which they fled, — in 
Philadelphia, in Baltimore, in Washington, 
in Richmond, in Petersburg, in Hampton, 
and on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. Not 
less than thirty died, I suppose, in Balti- 
more, and twenty, at the least, in Richmond ; 
and yet in not one of these places did a 
case of yellow fever originate, by contagion, 
from these sick and dying fugitives. 

That the disease spread through the at- 
mosphere, as its medium of transmission, 
seems fairly inferable from the fact that it 
spread rapidly in the direction of the pre- 
vailing winds, and but slowly in a direction 
across the track of those winds. The direc- 
tion of our prevailing winds, during the 
summer, is from the South; and it is but 
rarely that the wind blows from any other 
quarter. If we map down the wiiole region 
over which the yellow fever prevailed, and 



188 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

then draw a line in the direction of the 
prevailing winds, this line will be found to 
measure not much short of five miles ; 
while a line drawn at right angles to this 
will not, at the widest point, measure more 
than one and a half miles. The morbific agent 
— be it of what nature it may — did not seem 
to roll forward in a well-defined wave ; but, 
spreading first as a subtle miasm of feeble 
energy to a certain district, those most open 
to attack fell before it ; then, as the poison 
increased in intensity, the stronger fell ; and 
when it reached its height most of those re- 
maining were taken down. And thus it 
comes, I think, that it seemed in some in- 
stances as if it had spread by contagion. 
And, besides this, the liability to take the 
disease was found to be far greater by night 
than by day. Indeed, in so far as I saw, a 
person might go into the parts of the city in 
which the fever prevailed with greatest 
violence with perfect impunity during the 
day, especially if the day were a pleasant, 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 189 

sunshiny one ; but a single night spent in 
such a place usually proved fatal. 

These facts, to my mind, clearly demon- 
strate the non-contagious character of the 
yellow fever as it has prevailed in our city 
during the summer past. And now for an 
inference or two, based, of course, upon the 
supposition that this disease will be governed 
by the same laws, in other places and other 
seasons, which it has obeyed here during 
the season past. 

The fear of contracting the disease by 
visiting the sick — a fear in consequence of 
which some have died through neglect in 
our city, poor Stapleton for example — is an 
unreasonable fear, provided only that the 
visits be made by day. And the fear of 
nursing the sick or burying the dead, in a 
place to which the miasm has not spread, is 
a fear equally unreasonable. 

The idea of escaping the fever by seclud- 
ing oneself, while remaining in a city or 
part of a city over which the disease has 



190 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

spread itself, is an idea which will disap- 
point the hopes of those who trust to it. 
Exemption is to be sought in flight to some 
place beyond the range of the epidemic, 
and in flight alone. 

Such quarantine regulations as those 
adopted at one time by many of the towns 
and cities, and even counties, around us — 
but soon, I am happy to add, repealed again, 
— are perfectly useless to those adopting 
them, and cruel to those against whom they 
are adopted. 

Such quarantine regulations cannot be 
enforced in a country like ours. Make 
them as strict as you please, and in many 
ways they can and will be evaded. The 
way in which our citizens passed in every 
direction in spite of these regulations I have 
already mentioned. And the history of 
every such attempt which has been made in 
our country in years gone by is in this re- 
spect the same with that of the attempt 
made during the past summer. 



THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 191 

Such regulations are uncalled for. As 
already stated, fugitives from Norfolk and 
Portsmouth sickened and died of yellow 
fever in all the cities around us, and yet 
not one case was thus originated in any of 
those cities; — not by contact with their 
bodies while sick, nor by their burial after 
death, nor from the clothes they carried with 
them, nor from the beds on which they died. 

Such regulations are cruel. They often 
cause the fugitive to expose himself (as in 
the case of many fugitives from our city 
during the past summer) in such a way as 
to bring on and aggravate an attack of the 
disease, — so that he who but for this ex- 
posure might have recovered, dies. The 
utmost that can be said with truth is that 
yellow r fever may be transported in the con- 
fined air of the filthy hold of a ship ; but 
in the person of the sick, never. And here 
again let me quote a remark from the essay 
of Dr. Fergusson, — a remark which I wish to 
endorse in its every particular. " To pen up 



192 THE SUMMER OF THE PESTILENCE. 

the inhabitants upon the infected ground is to 
aggravate the disease a thousand-fold; and is, 
in fact, as cruel and absurd as it would be to 
barricade the doors against the escape of the 
inmates of a house that had taken fire, on the 
insane pretence that they would otherwise spread 
the conflagration" 



THE END. 



STEREOTYPED BY L. JOHNSON AND 00. 
PHILADELPHIA. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



022 194 826 9 






